


Rose Madder

by Vulpesmellifera



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Halloween 13, Creepy Dolls, Family Heirlooms, Gay Pilot, M/M, Roommates to lovers, almost immediately, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:34:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27161200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulpesmellifera/pseuds/Vulpesmellifera
Summary: With a history of bad choices firmly behind him, Sherlock Holmes has established himself with New Scotland Yard as a brilliant if egotistical solver of crime. An island unto himself, he's avoided all thoughts and urges of sentimental or physical attachment to another person not only for the sake of The Work, but for the equilibrium of his Mind Palace.Until he meets John Watson. This seemingly ordinary yet compelling man catches Sherlock's interest as something more than a mere roommate.When John moves in, he brings with him something unexpected: a strange family heirloom.The nightmare begins.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 234
Kudos: 166
Collections: A Halloween 13 2020, Spooky Johnlock Collection





	1. A Simulacrum

**Author's Note:**

> As a child, I excitedly sat in front of the television every New Year’s Eve and watched The Twilight Zone Marathon. Many of you will remember that this was in a time when you couldn’t skip around to all your favorites - you had to just wait and hope they’d come on while you were still awake.  
> One of my very favorite episodes was “Talky Tina.” My mother and I would sometimes go on for days after the marathon, spouting various lines like “My name is Talky Tina, and I don’t like you very much,” and “My name is Talky Tina, and you better be nice to me.” It was delightful.  
> One of the things I love about horror is that it gives me a sense that someone can be in a terrible situation, and still get out alive. Unfortunately, it was something that I needed to know as a child. In a turn of expectations, Talky Tina was the hero in that story, while the man she terrorized was the monster.  
> That's not this story, though. And there have been many other creepy doll stories told. In effect, I’m taking a beloved horror trope and putting my own spin on it, with a little help from a certain r/AITA post I came across. I’ll be sure to link that post at the end.
> 
> I'd also like to thank notjustmum and saratonin for the beta work. A thousand kudos to you two.
> 
> Enjoy!

_ ‘Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.’  _ Sherlock cringes as he thinks of that line again, his discomfort threading through him like a vein of ice. He must have come off as a right twat. 

The man looking at him from across the table doesn’t seem to be reconsidering their acquaintance, though. He’s just shot someone, and he seems buoyed by the perilous antics of the evening. His looks would be average to most - or perhaps, nondescript would be the accurate word. If Sherlock asked Lestrade or any of those other idiots to describe John Watson, they’d say he was short, maybe blond hair? No telling the eye colour. Frumpy clothes from off-the-peg department stores. What Sherlock wouldn’t give to have this man let him pick out some new clothes. Dress him up. Show him off like an exquisite piece of merchandise that belongs in a display window of finer things.

Because John Watson is  _ fascinating. _ Sherlock had thought he’d seen everything of note in his first glances, but John surprised him. John killed for him. Normal, slightly grumpy, extraordinary John. Sherlock recalls standing at the back of the ambulance with Lestrade, glaring orange shock blanket heavy on the indignant line of his shoulders. Providing Lestrade with a profile of their shooter when guileless John Watson looked at him from beyond the police tape. Red and blue lights flashing, car exhaust hanging in the crisp air, and that boyish face lined like an old man’s, those unassuming clothes and that closed-in stance, at parade rest and also trying not to be seen.

Trying not to be seen. How could he not want to be seen? He’s  _ glorious. _

And Sherlock, for the first time in years, begins to wonder if perhaps he’s been...too married to his work. He’s ignored the volcanic highs and lava flow lows of attraction in only the last six years, determined to never allow another paramour to lead him down a path of trouble, or distract him from The Work. But Sherlock gets into enough trouble himself these days, and John’s a  _ puzzle, _ he’s  _ remarkable. _ He lives for trouble.

And he’s bisexual.

Now here they sit in the Chinese restaurant, plastic red tablecloth covering the tables, cheap chopsticks at their elbows, Mrs Nyugen buzzing around them like a pollen-laden bumble bee and dropping off plates for them to share: Cantonese style sweet ‘n’ sour pork, egg fried rice, stir-fried prawn with ginger and spring onion, and a dish of braised tofu with mushroom. The fragrant odours lift into the air and tickle his nose as he watches John dig in. 

Whenever John looks up, he stares at him with glistening eyes - something akin to wonder. Or maybe it’s want. Both would be acceptable. 

“It wouldn't be a good idea,” Sherlock says aloud. He’s taken a bite of the rice and the tofu, the flavours lying complex and scrumptious on his tongue, but he can’t focus on the food, not with something so much more intriguing sat before him. 

John’s spine snaps up. “Sorry, what?” His blue eyes blink. His face is so  _ expressive, _ and the man really has no clue how easily he’s read. 

Sherlock pours a refill on the wine for both of them. It’s plummy and red, and satisfies his pervasive sweet tooth. He swirls it in the glass as he considers: two men who are supposed to be roommates should not get involved. But the more time he spends with John, the more he’s not only intrigued - the more he’s turned on. 

He tries to picture it: they fall into bed. Things stay physical and passionate and...well, if they discover they can’t stand one another, what then? It’s a failed experiment, perhaps.

But John just might be worth the risk. It could be more than physical passion - it could be a weight to counterbalance his own, a fair and equal measure on the scales of Justice. 

“Potential lovers should know the worst about each other.” 

John almost spits out his forkful of prawn. He starts to say something and changes his mind. His eyes meet Sherlock’s, round, deep dark pools of navy.

“You serious?” he says in a quiet voice.

“Very,” Sherlock says. After all, the other factor in this is The Work, and John has proved himself quite helpful in that area. 

“No longer married to your work, then?” John says with lifted eyebrows.

“We’ve discussed it, and decided an open relationship was in our best interests at this point in time.” Sherlock doesn’t avert his gaze. “You should know that I will always know where you’ve been. I am possessive of what’s mine.” He grins. “And I am very good in bed.”

John barks a laugh. It hits the atmosphere like a punctuation mark, ending conversations at other tables. “This is where I’m supposed to learn about the worst of you as my potential lover, and you tell me that?” His face goes red when he picks up on the silence and the interested gazes around them.

“I change tactics and provide information when I think it will most benefit me,” Sherlock says as the murmurs return among the other patrons.

John considers this. “Well, that’s honest, anyway.” He sips his wine.

“While patience is not one of my stronger suits, I am willing to wait until you give the signal.”

John sets his glass down. His eyes smoulder. “What happens when I give the signal?” His voice has gone low and rough.

“We drop all pretense of social niceties, throw the usual boring script out the window, and head home. To Baker Street.” Sherlock leans over the table and in a low rumble, says, “Where I will then proceed to get on my knees and suck your cock.”

John blushes at ‘cock,’ but he wants it, oh how Sherlock can tell - he wants it badly. Sherlock wonders how much action the man’s seen since being shot. Likely none.

“You’re right,” John says, though he speaks as if something’s caught in his throat. “It probably wouldn't be a good idea. But I...find myself having a hard time really giving a rat’s arse.”

Sherlock laughs, throaty, and feral. “It has been some time since I have found myself interested in another person in a romantic or sexual sense, John. I’m not likely to go easy on you. We could go on as roommates if you’d prefer, but I don’t always wear all of my clothes, and I’m rather prone to dramatic scenes such as playing my violin in the moonlight as it pours through the windows, or wearing shirts so tight you can see everything.” He lets the words drip from his lips like heated syrup.

John’s throat bobs. He downs his wine in one gulp and wipes his mouth. He stands and pulls on his coat, his eyes never leaving Sherlock’s.

Sherlock stands and sweeps his Belstaff on, ties his scarf in a swish and a loop and a tug. 

The air is thick between them in the cab, like heat bouncing off of pavement in a slow-building wave. Sherlock can see John’s reflection in the window, see the giddy smile that lights up the man’s face. Sherlock can’t wait to kiss those lips, to taste that mouth, to force low, guttural moans and loud cries of ecstasy through those vocal cords. 

Maybe he’s being brash. Careless. He’d spent his twenties in some casual arrangements, one long-term boyfriend that ended in disaster. But he’s different now. He’s a grown man with a job he himself created. He’s comfortable in his own skin. He’s free of the drugs that once possessed him. He’s even managed to get himself out from beneath the thick-padded thumbs of his elder brother and his parents. It’s taken time, but now maybe he can let himself have companionship again.

“I don’t normally do this,” he says. “While I’ve had casual shags in the past, I’m not the same person I was.”

John glances at the cab driver, his mouth pulling into a tightened line. He rubs at it with his hand. “I’m...well, I like casual, but this? Never with a potential flatmate-cum-potential lover.”

“Then it’s a bit of a first for both of us?” Sherlock says.

John smiles at him, his eyes gleaming in the low light of the cab’s interior. “Yeah.”

Something in Sherlock’s chest eases. The cab stops.

“We’re here,” Sherlock says.

* * *

Sherlock should have expected it, but some part of him still believed he would have to be the aggressor. Partners in the past had counted on Sherlock deducing their every desire, poring over their erogenous zones with fingers and tongue until he finally fucked them or they fucked him. Mouths if time was short, arse if it wasn’t. His ex-boyfriend was only a bit different, but he’d often needed Sherlock to dominate him during their lovemaking.

John is different. At first, Sherlock is overwhelmed by how the little man climbs him like a tree, pulls him down to his level, rubs his erection against Sherlock’s until Sherlock is crying for him to stop. 

“Tell me what you like,” John says. 

Sherlock groans as John licks his neck from jawline to collarbone. It’s disorienting, it’s explosive, it’s  _ everything. _

“Tell me,” John says, his voice filled with the thickness of lust.

“I - I don’t rightly know.” Sherlock can barely think. He wants John everywhere - for once, he wants someone to take care of him. But he’s struggling to find the words to explain while John nips at his jaw and ruts against him. 

“You’ve done this before I thought,” John says as he begins unbuttoning buttons. They’re snogging on the sofa now, though Sherlock barely remembers the grapple up the stairs and into the flat. 

“I have, but usually, I’m expected to take care of my partner, dial in on their desires, lift them to the greatest heights of pleasure - “

“Well, you can do that for me some other night. Tonight I’m sucking you off first, and I’m gonna blow your mind.” John pushes him back down as he spreads Sherlock’s shirt open, nips over his left pectoral, and closes his mouth around Sherlock’s nipple. He slides his hand to Sherlock’s right nipple and plucks it with a little twist. Sherlock bucks beneath him, lets his limbs go liquid, gives himself over to John’s administrations. 

John - this unassuming man who seems so ordinary - is a wild animal when his passions are unleashed. Sherlock is overwhelmed, dizzy with lust, grateful for these rough, physical attentions. John pops open his trouser button and the undoing of the zipper rips through the air. 

Sherlock opens his eyes to look down at that sandy blond head bent over his groin. His cock aches with want, thick and full, and straining to be touched. He lifts his hips to let John pull down his trousers, followed by his pants. Sherlock’s cock slaps against his belly, hard and glistening at the tip. John stares. 

“What?” Sherlock asks, propped by his elbows.

John’s eyes meet his. A devilish smile forms on his lips. “I’m admiring the view.”

Sherlock is used to being noticed. To being looked at. Then to being either dismissed or disdained. 

John looks at him as if he were the most miraculous thing. Even when it comes to his genitalia. 

John is  _ perfect. _

A wet, hot mouth closes over the head of his cock. John’s tongue wiggles at the slit. Sherlock’s elbows slide out from beneath him, and he arches against the sofa, revels in the mixed sensations of John’s ridged upper palate with the soft slickness of his tongue. He writhes and moans, sinks into the hot tingle of pleasure dancing up and down his spine. John bobs up and down on his cock, and fondles Sherlock’s bollocks, gently tugging and rolling them between his fingers. 

It’s been years since anyone has touched him. And it’s never been like this. 

“John,” he says. “Please kiss me.”

John licks his bollocks instead. 

“Oh lord,” Sherlock pants. “Please.”

John moves up Sherlock’s body. He’s quick and as fluid as a snake. His mouth closes over Sherlock’s, capturing his groan as John’s cock slides next to his own now spit-slick shaft. His mouth moves along Sherlock’s jaw to the sensitive skin below and behind his ear. Sherlock’s cock throbs with each press of John’s lips. 

“I want to see all of you,” John says.

They stand and Sherlock strips faster than he ever has in his life. He grabs John’s hand and leads him to his bedroom. John kisses him by the bed, and then slowly, deliberately, pushes Sherlock onto the mattress. He lays him down on the pillows. Kisses him again. Sherlock is wanting, straining, but John slows it down. Grazes Sherlock’s skin with soft kisses. Explores his shoulders and pectorals with his tongue. Slides along his obliques, and strokes his thighs. Straddles Sherlock’s hips, lining their cocks together. Sherlock arches his back and looks up at John, who is looking at him like he’s a treasure chest full of gold. 

“You’re brilliant,” John says as his hands close around their cocks. He rocks his hips, fucking up into the tunnel of his hands, rubbing against the sensitive underside of Sherlock’s prick. “I’ve never met anyone so brilliant. You’re extraordinary.”

John’s magnificent, a small man with a broad expanse of chest, a sheen of perspiration across his clavicles, eyes shining, lips quirked. His ardour and his desire are evident on his face. Sherlock’s pleasure is twisting, spinning, bursting behind his eyes as his cock spills over John’s hands. John uses Sherlock’s release to pull his own cock, soft grunts falling from his mouth as he tilts his head back and closes his eyes. Sherlock catalogues every moment of John’s orgasm, the maze of lines on his face, the way his body goes rigid as his hips jerk, the hot liquid hitting Sherlock’s skin.

John is  _ wondrous. _

John leans over him, bracing himself on his hands. Sherlock lies still beneath him, putting everything to perfect memory within his Mind Palace. He’s quite proud of his Mind Palace, an impeccable technique to file and recall his experiences and learning in life. He’s opening a whole new room for John, spartan furnishing at first glance, but no doubt to be filled with all the things John loves as Sherlock learns over time.

“Jesus,” John says, his voice rough and low. “That’s the hottest thing I’ve ever done.” He slides down just a little and licks a dab of his own semen off Sherlock’s skin.

“God,” Sherlock groans and bangs his head on the pillow.

John chuckles and moves off the bed. A bit stiff. “I still can’t believe this leg of mine. You’ve cured it.” He stands by the bed, the corners of his mouth lifted in amazement.

Sherlock smiles. “We cured it.”

* * *

John’s out doing the shopping. Sherlock paces the lounge. He’s browsed through John’s stack of second-hand books and he’s gone through the dry goods in the pantry that John brought with him from that tiny bedsit. He’s perused John’s mismatched crockery and has been through the pockets of his extra jacket.

The upstairs bedroom calls to him.

John has been living with him for three days. They’ve had plenty of vigorous sex - across the kitchen table, in Sherlock’s room, on the sofa, in the bath, and bent over the back of Sherlock’s chair. John smells like sweat and peat and salt, and Sherlock wants to know  _ everything. _

At night, John returns to the upstairs bedroom - “in an effort to enact healthy boundaries,” which made Sherlock scoff. 

“We’re new to each other and we’re already courting disaster by living with one another. We need to keep this casual just for a little while longer, just as we get to know each other.”

_ Idiot, _ Sherlock thinks.

He’s home alone and gazing upwards. The mystery beckons him like a siren’s song stretching over the waves and carried along the wind to reach a sailor’s ear. What would John Watson keep in his room? What would he leave out for anyone to see, and what might be tucked away in a box at the back of the closet? Would he keep a lockbox? Yes, a man like John Watson would. Sherlock will need his lockpicks. 

He is already halfway out of his room with his lockpick kit when a niggling thought halts him: most people hate to have their personal items rifled through. Sherlock has lost more than one potential friend because of his inability to keep a cap on his curiosity.

But John isn’t like that. John thinks Sherlock is brilliant. John yelled at him for body parts in the fridge and then closed the fridge and asked Sherlock to label his body parts. Then he labeled the parts himself and cordoned them off to their own shelf, letting Sherlock know that he was absolutely not to put body parts anywhere else but the designated shelf.

Sherlock sprints up the stairs with his kit pinned between his elbow and his rib cage. He opens the door, pauses, and then he steps inside. 

The full-sized bed is in the same place beside the opposite wall, and -

_ What is that? _

He blinks. Looks again.

Sitting in a chair by the window is a doll so old it is likely antique. A bisque doll, the kind with heads created from unglazed porcelain. Glass eyes the colour of forget-me-nots, upturned corners of a peach-pink mouth with the slightest show of teeth -  _ chipped incisor _ \- and hair the colour of marmalade jam. It sticks straight down around its shoulders and creates an odd fringe over the inscrutable stare. The dress is a faded rose colour in gingham check beneath a ruffled apron yellowed with age. The arms splay from the body with the fingers flexed. Varnish flakes from the fingertips. Black Mary Janes cap the tiny feet. It’s the size of an actual human child, of toddling age perhaps.

_ Why possess such a doll? _ Sherlock wonders. A sentimental attachment to a childhood toy? A collector of odd antiquities? Perhaps a gift for his alcoholic sister?

Sherlock settles on a family heirloom. If this had belonged to his grandmother, or to his mother -  _ dead now, though of what? _ \- John would more likely keep the doll out of sentiment. 

He moves on to the dresser where sit the following items: a bottle of cologne, keys and coins in a bowl, some old photographs of John with what is presumably his unit taken in Kandahar, a pair of white earbuds coiled and fastened with a black velcro strip, a black, plastic comb with a blond hair stuck between its teeth, and a blue, spiral notebook beside six yellow sharpened pencils. The notebook is filled with checklists and reminders: moving plans, groceries, important numbers, all written in the slanted scratch of John’s writing. 

The top drawer is full of socks and pants. The socks are white, black, and brown, all rolled up and lined in rows. The pants are folded neatly into squares and filed in like good little soldiers. 

The middle drawer holds vests and t-shirts, and some tiny work-out shorts that grab Sherlock’s attention and tug at his cock. John’s rear end would look smashing in them.

He finds more jumpers - so many jumpers - and collared shirts and folded trousers, so he finally moves to the wardrobe. John’s dress uniform hangs inside a garment bag, alongside two off-the-peg suits and more collared shirts, a raincoat, other coats, and wellies. Several pairs of shoes sit on the closet floor. Belts and ties hang on the inside of the door. Cardboard boxes sit on a shelf above the clothing rod. 

Sherlock sets one box on the floor and opens it. Inside is a grey, metal lockbox. Next to it is a red metal kit without a lock. He sets the lockbox aside. Objects rattle around inside as he does. He recognises the red kit - it’s a dissection kit, probably a good twenty years old. He flips open the metal clasp with a  _ plink _ and lifts the lid. 

Inside are all the components: surgical scissors, iris scissors, tissue forceps, scalpel handle and blades, a probe with an angled tip, dissection needles, a pipette, dissecting pins, and a short metal ruler. Sherlock lays each piece on the floor beside the toolbox. The metal shines in the natural light spilling through the window.

He looks at the window. From his low angle, the doll looms large beside it. The angle of light makes it seem like she’s watching him. It makes him think of a room of dolls. China dolls, bisque dolls, and cloth dolls alike, all with that same unerring stare. Some of their eyelids close if you rock them just so - Sherlock’s not sure how he knows that, just that he does. Each of them stained with the slightest of blushes, all of them with a matte, Caucasian skin-like appearance. Rows of them nestled together, in ruffles and brocade and aprons and finer dresses, all shoed, some velvet and others hard plastic or leather. Most with bows in their hair, many of them sporting thatches of curls, some made with real human hair and others made with horse, still more of spun plastic. 

Sherlock shakes his head of the image, wondering when he had ever wandered into a doll shop or some little girl’s room, but he doesn’t dwell on it. What’s far more interesting is this little dissection kit, a remnant of John’s time at med school. 

_ I wonder if he’d let me use it. _

It feels precious to him, the idea of using his lover’s dissection kit for his own experiments. 

He lays each tool back in its place, cradling each one with care as if they themselves were made of porcelain. He puts everything else back in the closet. The lockbox he’s deduced: dog tags, childhood swiss army knife, photographs -  _ likely family _ \- legal documents, and cash. He’ll open it another day when his mind is in need of a distraction. 

The dissection kit he holds to his chest as he starts to leave the room. He pauses in the doorway and looks back at the doll. 

_ Odd. _ It’s not moved, of course. But the vision the doll sparked in him while he’d laid out the dissection tools teases at him like a baited hook at a fish’s mouth. While his imaginings can be vivid, this one seemed as if someone had plucked such a scene and planted it right in his memories. That in itself is unusual.

Sherlock shuts the door. Stands at the top of the stairs and listens. The flat hums with the heaters on, and groans somewhere in the northmost corner as the building shifts. Old building that it is. Nothing happens inside the room.

Well, of course not. This must be why there’s such hysteria over dolls in the populace at large: as a simulacrum of a human child, they bring with them unsettling thoughts. It’s eerie. He’s never given it much consideration before, but he can understand now why illogical minds would create such wild imaginings around an inanimate object. Like a golem, or poppets. 

With the dissection kit in hand, he bounces down the stairs, pushing any thought of the doll from his mind.

It doesn’t warrant further consideration.


	2. The Murmur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Rose Madder playlist is on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7EajPqqnyMCTiJY3ga0eoh).

“Is that my uni dissection kit?” John's voice cuts across the room with notes of perplexity and astonishment. 

Sherlock meets his eyes. _Uh-oh._ “I ran out of scalpel blades.”

“So you thought you’d go through my personal things and borrow some?” His tone borders on angry.

Sherlock pretends not to notice. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, writing down notes on the decay rate of eyeballs dunked in water at varying levels of salinity. 

John starts forward, but halts. That sudden stop in movement catches Sherlock’s attention. He looks up.

It seems as if John’s come to a realisation. He sucks on his lips. His eyes cast at the floor though he stands straight with his shoulders back. “So, uh, you were in my room?” he says.

“Yes,” Sherlock says, watching. Waiting.

John gives a little chuckle, and slides his thumbs into the loops of his belt on each hip. “So you saw her then?”

“Her?” Sherlock asks.

“The, uh, the doll.”

“She’s yours?” Sherlock sets down his pencil, quietly, carefully, so as not to grab John’s attention. He tries to keep the tone of his voice nonchalant, almost uninterested.

Emotions flicker over John’s face. None seem good. “Harry asked me to take her. Creeped her out, I guess.”

“It’s strange how people can ascribe supernatural traits to inanimate objects simply because they have a face,” Sherlock says, still watching John from his periphery. “It’s not alive. Made of composite parts and fabric. Styled to look like someone’s ideal person, if I had to wager.” He thinks for a moment of a beauty pageant he once saw on the telly. Small girls - live children - paraded on stage in adult outfits and caked on makeup. Like living dolls. 

That’s shudder-worthy. 

“Then she was Harry’s?” Sherlock ventures.

“She belonged first to my grandmother,” he says.

“Ah,” Sherlock says. “An inherited toy, then.”

“Yeah,” John says. He seems a little embarrassed, the way he shifts his stance and sucks in his cheeks.

Sherlock takes pity on him. “I understand. Sentiment is your lot, John, not mine,” he says. “I’ll try not to judge you for it.” He picks up his pencil and continues taking notes.

“You berk,” John says, and they’re back on solid ground. “And no going through my stuff and taking my things. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

Sherlock flashes him a guilty smile - or, rather, a winsome smile that pretends to look guilty.

“I’m serious. You may be the bloody genius here, but that doesn’t mean I’m a pushover,” John says and wags his finger. “You hear me, Sherlock?”

“As loud as a dinner bell. Which reminds me, what are we having tonight?”

“I told you, I’m headed out for a pint with Stamford tonight. You’re on your own.”

Sherlock pouts. 

“No,” John says. “Put on your big boy pants and make yourself something to eat. I’m not the maid and I’m not the cook, and I’m not your bloody errand boy.”

Sherlock changes tactics. “But you could be, and I’d reward you handsomely.” His eyebrows angle inward as his eyes grow hooded, a suggestive smile on his lips.

“Jesus, don’t give me that look. Listen, I’m going out for one pint, and then I’m going to fuck you into that mattress. So don’t leave.”

Sherlock won’t argue that. “Yes, John,” he says, his voice low and purring.

John runs one hand over his face. “I thought the war would kill me, but now I’m thinking it might be you.”

Sherlock licks his upper lip. Slowly.

John reddens as he follows the movement. “I’m leaving. Don’t go anywhere. Later on I want you to put that mouth to good use.” He points to the dissection kit. “You’ve got some apologising to do.”

“Yes, John,” Sherlock says, his cock plumping up as he plans just how he’ll be apologising to John later.

* * *

Sherlock traces his fingers over the worn spine of John’s medical textbook. It’s been a few weeks of their arrangement, and Sherlock has never felt so energised - apart from some of his cocaine highs. This - this is probably more productive, though. 

He’s waiting for John to come downstairs, as they’ve decided to take a walk in Regent’s Park. John has been warming up to doing other things with Sherlock aside from mad, passionate sex. They’ve held hands while watching telly on the sofa. He massages Sherlock’s feet sometimes. Other times, he’ll tunnel his fingers through Sherlock’s curls, soothe his thoughts into clear strings of order and calm. He’ll bring home takeaway and ensure Sherlock gets the most delicious morsels of his favourites. He’s soft jumpers and beneath that, a querulous temper. To see John in a rage is borderline frightening, so Sherlock behaves just well enough to make sure that the full extent of that temper is never pointed at him.

The other wondrous part of John is how bulldog protective he is of Sherlock. How his quiet posturing around Sherlock makes him feel as if he were a significant asset. John’s behavior makes Sherlock want to be better, want to be thoughtful, considerate, even, of another person, instead of dismissive and manipulative to his own ends. 

Just a little, anyway. 

His phone lights up. _Lestrade._

The case involves a man believed to have fallen from a window - but his house is locked, there’s no sign of entry, and the window is painted shut. The paint looks old, but the injuries are consistent with someone who had fallen out of a window. No drag marks. Blood pooled beneath the body. Man lived alone. The upstairs neighbour was not at home and his flat was locked.

_Hm. Interesting._

He sweeps into the hall and is about to shout up the stairs when he hears the murmur of John’s voice above.

_On the phone?_

Except he knows John left his phone on the desk in the lounge.

He pokes his head around the doorway. Sure enough, John’s phone, which was given to him by Harry, sits on the desk. 

He goes back to the bottom of the stairs. John pauses. Starts talking again. As if carrying on a conversation. 

“John!” Sherlock booms up the stairwell. “Case!”

All talking stops. Floorboards creak as John heads for the door. Pops his blond head out. “Be right down!” he calls. It thrills Sherlock to no end that John will jump up for a case as if it were the cherry on a sundae.

Sherlock shrugs into his coat and ties his scarf. John’s sneakered feet drum down the stairs. 

Sherlock eyes him as John pulls on his jacket. 

“What?” John says.

“Who were you talking to?”

John quirks an eyebrow. “What?”

“Just now. I heard you talking up in your room.”

John jerks his head, his face a cartoonish depiction in bemusement. He laughs as he pockets his phone and his keys. Pats his pocket where his wallet bulges. “Might need to get your hearing checked. I wasn’t talking to anyone.” He bumps Sherlock on the shoulder. “Where we headed?”

“My hearing is exceptional,” Sherlock states as he leads John out the door. “You were speaking to yourself, then. No need to be embarrassed.” 

“Okay, sure.” John chuckles. “Don’t think I was doing that either, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Typical,” Sherlock says with a snort. 

John swats his arm. 

* * *

The case turns out despicably easy. The man was pushed by his upstairs neighbour through not his own window, but the neighbour’s window. Sherlock gets the upstairs neighbour - Joe - to confess once he proves the downstairs neighbour - Craven - was in his flat by the shoe marks on the stairs. The two men had had a spat about the noise Joe created during his aerobic workouts. Thumping, thudding, rattling, and driving Craven to have it out with Joe. 

Craven made some unkind comments toward Joe - apparently they had a history where Craven stole Joe’s girl - and Joe had had enough. Distracted Craven with a sight out the window - “ _there’s Lydia now, coming back to me, I see her on the pavement across the way,”_ \- and none too bright Craven ducked his head out the window, whereupon Joe tossed him out. Shut the window. Left for the shops. Came back to another neighbour having called in the body. Waited for the police to come. Figured he could say Craven hadn’t come into his flat. Nothing to make anyone think Craven’d been visiting Joe.

Until Sherlock pointed out the mud left behind on the carpet. The impressions of Craven’s boots in the shag, the rug fibers bent in one direction like shoe-shaped crop circles in a farmer’s field.

The man is a blubbering, sputtering mess, talking of that cheating bastard, the airs on him, how he thought himself so better than Joe - even his name Craven. Who the fuck had the horrible name Craven?

Sherlock could appreciate a unique name, so that didn’t help Joe’s case, in Sherlock’s good opinion.

DC Reynolds appears beside Sherlock. “Another one for the books, eh?” Reynolds is a likeable fellow with deep-set brown eyes and a shock of carrot-orange hair. “Brilliant, as always.”

Sherlock eyes him. Reynolds is gay. His eyes twinkle, and though Sherlock had always thought Reynolds’ attention to him was simple hero worship, he’s clued in that there may be something more here. 

And there is. Reynolds glances around. John was looking at the body, and came in just in time to see Sherlock finagle the confession from Upstairs Joe. He’s now talking to DI Lestrade on the opposite side of the room, by the window from where Downstairs Craven was pushed. 

Reynolds leans closer to Sherlock. Sherlock can smell the salt of crisps on the man’s breath as he says, “I don’t normally do this while on the job, but do you think maybe we could head out for coffee or a drink sometime? You can tell me more about how you do what you do.” His eyes sweep over Sherlock’s frame. “I’d be an eager pupil.”

Sherlock’s usual line - “Thank you for your interest, but I consider myself married to my work,” - lays at the very tip of his tongue, like a swimmer standing at the end of the diving board. He pauses just as John shows up beside them.

John throws a suspicious look at Reynolds. He takes Sherlock by the elbow and angles him so the two of them cut Reynolds out of the circle of conversation. “Well, Sherlock, I think this one’s a wrap. You were brilliant, as always. Shall we pick up Indian on the way home?”

 _Interesting._ John’s nostrils flare, and the back of his neck is turning scarlet. The line of his shoulders is as rigid as a brick wall. His midnight blue eyes hold Sherlock’s gaze, as certain as the trajectory of the sun. His hand on the crook of Sherlock’s arm is possessive. Claiming.

“Sherlock?” John prompts.

“Yes,” Sherlock says. “Indian. On the way home.” _Home._

John smiles. Beams. It’s a slow unfolding, curtains drawing back to allow light to spill through.

_A conductor of light._

John gives a sharp nod to DC Reynolds. “We’re done here. Have a great night, mate.” His tone of voice suggests he doesn’t actually mean what he says. 

He guides Sherlock to the door. His hand hovers now at the small of Sherlock’s back. Sherlock can’t feel it through the thickness of his coat, but nevertheless, he knows it’s there. John’s hands are much smaller than his, but they’re potent. They can harm, they can heal, and they are another part of John, prominent among all the wonderful things that make up John. 

Sherlock’s heart rate speeds up as they walk, John with his chin tilted slightly down, his lips nearly vanished into his mouth. Sherlock waits him out. He’s learned from observation that John isn’t good at expressing his feelings. But then, neither is Sherlock. He’s curious to know what John will say, if anything.

_Please let him say something._

The curiosity kills, scratches at him like a cat at a post. 

“John?” he says.

“What?” John breaks from his thoughts to look at Sherlock.

Sherlock watches him. He lifts his hand for a taxi. One pulls to the kerb with a rubbery squeal. 

He opens the door and gestures for John to get in. They rarely take taxis now, always checking the driver and then side-eying each other with smirks traveling across their faces. It’s a ritual Sherlock has become attached to. 

As they settle on the squeaky leather seats - freshly cleaned with the smell of leather polish in the air - he regards John again. John’s chewing on the inside of his lower lip, his eyes flinty and small. 

“DC Reynolds invited me out for a drink,” Sherlock says.

John’s head whips to face him. “Did he?” His fingers flex on his knee. “Are you going with him then?” He averts his eyes. Stares instead at his thighs.

“No. Why should I?”

“He’s fit, innit he?”

“I suppose. But as I’ve said before, I am...rather attached to my work.”

John’s eyes meet his. “To your work?” Notes of curiosity and repressed anger dance through his tone.

“Yes,” Sherlock says. He reaches over and slides his fingers through John’s. They’re cold from the chill of early spring air. “A work of which you are a part.”

John lowers his gaze, licks his lips. “And, is that all I am? A part of the work?”

Sherlock hums. “You are also my flatmate, who I am currently sleeping with.”

“Yeah, would be pretty sticky if we saw other people and brought them home, wouldn’t it?” His voice is back to normal, but his face is tight. His fingers haven’t yielded to Sherlock’s touch. 

“Yes,” Sherlock says. 

“But...we agreed to keep this casual. So we didn’t get...goddamnit, this was a bad idea.”

“Why?” 

“Because - because I get jealous, Sherlock. I can’t help it and I know you’re the pinnacle of reason and compartmentalizing your feelings, but it doesn’t work that way for the rest of us, okay? So, you go on with that big brain of yours and delete all this, and I’ll do my best to just...get over it.”

Sherlock slides closer on the seat. “Don’t,” he says.

“Don’t what?” John snaps. 

“I am dedicated to my work,” Sherlock says. “It would not be in my interest to have anyone else take over any part of my work. I should find that very...upsetting.”

John peers at him. “Are you taking the piss? Am I meant to understand something here?”

Sherlock lets a small smile slip onto his lips. “I’m not a funny man.”

“No, you’re not. You really need to work on your sense of humour, actually, because the rest of us do not find severed hands in the bathroom funny.”

“But you said you needed a hand with the plumbing.”

John shoots Sherlock a look that borders on laughing. “You’re a nutter. And I like that about you. But you’d give anyone else a heart attack and they’d have the police in on you in seconds.”

Sherlock grins. “That’s why it couldn’t be anyone else but you.”

John’s face goes slack as he stares at Sherlock. “Do you mean that?”

“I don’t say anything I don’t mean.”

“Well, that’s a lie.”

“I mean it.” Sherlock ducks his head, hopes his blush isn’t obvious in the low light of the backseat of the cab.

“So, um, if I were to ask...well, if we were to agree to make this exclusive…”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

John’s face brightens like a small child promised an ice cream cone. His eyes light up like stars and a smile spreads across his face, one that you can see he’s trying to restrain, but the mirth spills from him in waves. Sherlock returns his smile and satisfaction glows in his chest when John’s hand flips over to grab his. 

“Excellent,” Sherlock says. “You can move into my room tonight.”

John’s face slips into a mask of consternation. “Now hold on, don’t you think we should wait on...moving into the same room together, at least?”

“But John. We have a great sex life, don’t we?”

A small, choked sound erupts from the taxi driver. 

John glares. “Yes, but -”

“Well, it’s settled then. You’ll move your things into my room and that way we have easier access to each other’s bodies.”

“Can we talk about this at home?” John says in a low whisper.

Sherlock lets his voice drop into a lower register. “I’m not asking for a cuddle, John. I’m promising getting us both off to help us fall asleep, and I’m promising morning sex.” No need to speak of the softer emotions bubbling near the surface, warm feelings of bliss - chemicals rushing the bloodlines and stuffing him with uplifting neurotransmitters. 

John loves morning sex, but it’s not often that they get to indulge. Easier to dance around those fuzzier emotions and lure him in this way.

“Besides, you’ve been spending more time sleeping in my room than your own anyway.” Sherlock straightens and speaks in his normal voice.

John purses his lips and gives a nod. Shifts in his seat. Ah, most likely experiencing an erection.

“Fine,” he says. “But you’re making room for my clothes in that closet of yours. I’m not trudging up the stairs every time I need a change.”

“I did say ‘move your things,’ didn’t I?”

John huffs and shakes his head. But he’s smiling.

Yes. He’s done well in choosing John Watson.


	3. The Watcher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a graphic story of violence that occurred in the past.

“Sherlock, I swear to god, I’m taking all my things and moving back upstairs if you don’t make more room in that bloody closet and empty one more drawer!”

John struts around the lounge like one of those little bantam roosters, all puffed chest and blustery cluck and crow. Sherlock delights in watching the splendid display from his chair. He turns another page in the newspaper, pretending not to watch. “John, do you really own so many things? I thought a military man traveled light.”

John pauses to stare at him in askance. “Sherlock, I do need to wear clothes.”

Sherlock nonchalantly lifts an eyebrow as he meets John’s indignant gaze. “Do you?”

“Yeah, funny,” John says. “Hilarious, coming from a pack rat.”

Sherlock puts the newspaper down, his dander rising now. “A pack rat?”

“Yeah, what you call all this?” John gestures around the flat. It’s full of mementos Sherlock has picked up over time, and gifts from clients. Books, objects of scientific study, old electronics, and diverting bric-a-brac. “You borderline hoard. You’re one stuffed bat away from me calling Britain’s Biggest Hoarders.”

Sherlock stands and lets the newspaper fall to the floor in a _whoosh_. “I am not a hoarder. I collect things of interest and value, and much of what you see was gifted to me for my services.”

John snorts as he throws his arms in the air. “This place is a bloody fire hazard.”

“Hmph,” Sherlock says, feeling a tightness at the nape of his neck and between his shoulder blades. His equilibrium is upset. Pricked. Prickly. Like cat’s claws walking across his scapulas. He rolls his shoulders. 

John grunts and stomps toward the stairs.

“John?” Sherlock takes a step to follow.

“Sherlock, you aren’t taking me seriously. I’m going up to my room to think.”

Sherlock bites his lip. Listens as John’s feet pound against the floorboards of the steps. His chest squeezes with an uncomfortable feeling, like a jacket buttoned up too tight. “Wait!” He dashes to the bottom of the stairs. John turns to face him from halfway up. “You’re right,” Sherlock says, though he can barely look John in the eye. He realises he’s embarrassed. “Just...give me a few minutes. I must purchase a few crates to place my items in for storage. I suppose you’re right - the costumes needn’t be in my bedroom. I’ll put them upstairs. Not you.”

John’s body relaxes, which eases the tight feeling in Sherlock’s rib cage. “I appreciate that. I’m not trying to rush us, or change you, Sherlock. But if we’re doing this, we’re doing this as equals. On the same page. And I won’t bully you into doing anything you don’t want to do.”

“I want to do this,” Sherlock says. Eager, now.

“Okay. Thank you.” John rubs the back of his neck. “I appreciate you listening to me and taking me seriously.”

Sherlock bobs his chin. “I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll be waiting,” John says, smiling. He looks like himself again, all boyish charm in a middle-aged man. And Sherlock knows he is forgiven. It washes over him like a cool breeze on a warm day. 

* * *

As he passes into the lounge, he notices the skull on the mantelpiece is turned around.

Sherlock places his crates on the floor and puts the skull back into its spot. The bat case is backwards. He adjusts it to face the right way.

He picks up the crates and goes into his room. John is folding jumpers into a drawer. 

“John, I really prefer the skull not get turned around on the mantelpiece, if you don’t mind,” Sherlock says as he opens the door to his wardrobe. 

“Well hello to you, too,” John says. 

“Hello,” Sherlock says, inhaling the warm scent of cedar. Much more preferable to naphthalene. Perhaps he’ll get vacuum seal bags for some of his items for storage.

“The skull? Haven’t touched it.”

Sherlock glances at him, looking for the tells of a lie. “You didn’t? Nor the bat?”

John tilts his head. “No. Don’t have a reason to, really. It’s interesting, but I don’t have any reason to move it.”

Sherlock faces his closet. Begins picking out the more obvious costume pieces to fold into the crate. Mrs Hudson knows better than to move his things, even when she does come in on the odd day to dust. He glances at John again, noting his concentration on his folding and tucking. 

And that’s when he sees it. Wooden rocking chair in the corner. Toddler-sized doll sitting on the chair. Its vacuous gaze is on the door to the room.

“John,” he says, befuddled. “I must admit...I thought you’d leave the doll upstairs.”

“You did tell me to move my things in here,” John says, gesturing at his clothes and the doll.

“I more meant your...necessities. Not...a child’s toy.”

“It was never a child’s toy. It was my grandmother’s.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says. “I suppose I’m wondering about its effect on the aesthetic of the room. You don’t think it clashes with the bedroom of two adult men?” He glances at his grand little bust of Goethe on the shelf, and the Judo certificate hanging above his bed. Slides his eyes over the Periodic Tables on the wall, and the sleek lamps illuminating the room. 

“It’s mine, Sherlock, and if I’m staying down here, it stays with me,” John says. The whip-crack of heat in his voice sends an unwelcome jolt down Sherlock’s spine, like a lightning flash. Static electricity seems to hang heavy in the air. John continues, his voice thick with displeasure. “You’ve got dead things in the lounge and body parts in the kitchen, and you want to talk to me about a doll?” 

Sherlock shifts his stance. “Oh,” he says. 

John Watson is unpredictable.

John rubs the back of his neck and rises from his crouch at the drawers. “Listen, I...I’m sorry, I know it’s weird. It’s just that...oh god. Well, there’s more to it than it just being a simple family heirloom.” 

“Oh.” Sherlock’s mind spins forward, unable to deduce anything other than the fact that John’s parents came to an untimely end, but what on earth does that have to do with the doll? 

John exhales, drops his hand. “I’m surprised you haven’t gone snooping in my past already. Kinda thought you would and then I wouldn’t have to tell you myself.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows raise. “I haven’t had the opportunity just yet, to be honest.”

John laughs. It’s short and sharp. “Yeah, fair ‘nough. Okay.” He crosses his arms. Lowers his shoulders. “After my grandmother went into hospice, my mom took the doll. Kept it in the attic at first, but eventually she brought it out to the drawing room, I think as a joke at first. To creep Harry and me out. It was near Halloween at the time and even though we didn’t celebrate it, she’d been watching scary movies and thought it was a laugh. And then, one day, it was gone. 

“Then, I see it in her room. My parents’ room, I mean. And I ask her - why on earth is she keeping the thing in her room? And she says it’s special to my father - he asked her to keep it down where he could see it.”

“It was your paternal grandmother’s doll?” Sherlock asks.

“Yeah. It was. And he remembered it from when he was a boy. Said it was special not just to her, but to his father - my grandfather. He’d wondered what had happened to it.”

He pauses. The shadows in the room thicken in the corners. The light from the windows dims into a foggy grey. Sherlock waits.

“Anyway, they had it in their room, in the corner on the chair.” He rubs at his hand, his eyes sliding to the middle distance. His face looks older. The lines deepen like grooves in the pavement. A chill settles in the air. “And it’s all I have left of them, of something they both adored. And I kinda hate that it’s a doll. I mean, what grown man keeps a doll in their bedroom? My dad could use my mom as an excuse. But at the end of the day, I don’t have an excuse, except that when I came back from Afghanistan...not long after I came back I realised it was the only thing I had left of them.”

“What happened to them?” Sherlock asks. He’d originally thought perhaps a car accident. But the way John holds himself - shoulders ratcheted in, chin tucked, fingers now dug into his armpits - it’s beyond a car accident. John blames himself.

A beat before John continues.

“I can’t help but feel that if I had been home, I would have seen things. Things Harry missed.”

 _Ah._ Sherlock tilts his head in sympathy.

“I was studying to be a doctor. Harry...Harry lived by our parents and looked in on them. But she wasn’t...somehow she didn’t see it coming.” John’s voice is hard, like metal filings saturate his vocal cords. “And I can’t believe she didn’t. I can’t…” He hugs himself harder as his face twists into an angry grimace.

“John,” Sherlock says, his voice low and quiet. As gentle as he can manage. “What happened?”

John shakes his head ‘no’ but he’s talking. “My dad had started drinking. He used to box to let off steam. He’d work during the day. He was a builder. My mum was a schoolteacher. She came home to us kids and made us dinner and hovered over us while we did our homework. And he’d go out to the pub, or to the ring. Hamish Watson. He was pretty good at it, from what I hear. 

“And then he killed someone. It was an accident, they say. It happens. But he killed someone, and he couldn’t take it. I think it ate at him. He started going to his local more and more and he’d come back pissed. Mum could handle him, though. She’d just get him through the door and cleaned up and in bed.”

The urge to apologise assails Sherlock like raindrops pelting his head and heart. It’s a strange and unfamiliar sensation - what use is an apology when he had nothing to do with it?

“So when I went to uni, and Harry had finished school and moved nearby and started her career, I thought everything was fine. Dad had retired. Mum was still working and taking care of him. Harry did some of their shopping and helped out around the house. I thought it would be fine for me to go to school and...I thought it would be fine.” He swallows.

Sherlock doesn’t move. John is still lost to that faraway place, sunk somewhere in his memories. And Sherlock is dying to know but he doesn’t hurry John along. This is delicate. This is like holding shards of glass without cutting your hands.

“One night, Dad came home from the pub, and he...he must have been in the kitchen and maybe they got into a fight. Most of the neighbours didn’t hear a thing. And honestly, they didn’t fight all that often, at least not while us kids were there. Someone heard a scream, but they couldn’t tell what house it came from. Didn’t think anything about it until the cops went around asking questions.”

“Mum didn’t show up for work the next day. Phone calls to the house went unanswered. One of her friends stopped there after the end of the school day. The door was unlocked.” His voice has gone flat. Dead. “Dad had cut mom’s throat, and left her body in the kitchen. He was in the bedroom. He’d cut his own throat and bled out on the carpet.”

Sherlock doesn’t move. His hands are fists by his sides and his throat has gone as arid as a desert. John’s come to the end of his story, the strange glimmer in his eyes fading as he refocuses his gaze. He looks over at the doll. “If anyone had asked me would my dad ever hurt my mum, I would have said no. He loved her. It was the drinking that did it.”

Sherlock considers. “This is why you have such a problem with your sister’s drinking. Beyond the usual family concern and inconvenience.”

John scoffs. “It’s not as if I thought she might off Clara at some point. It’s more...she saw what that did to our family.”

“It’s also why you are particularly affected by domestic cases, and strive for justice for the victim. Not just because justice in action embodies one of your values, but because you are personally affected by it.”

John stares down at the floor, but he nods. “Yeah. Yeah.” It’s a weight - the way his shoulders strain, and the way he can’t look Sherlock in the eye.

Sherlock looks at the doll. At that honey-coloured hair and unseeing glass eyes. “If it is important to you, John, I won’t ask you to move it.” 

John doesn’t say anything.

“Thank you for telling me.”

John gives an ‘I-don’t-care shrug’ of his shoulders.

Sherlock wavers, rocking forward on his heels, clasping his hands together. “Does the doll have a name?” He can’t picture three generations of Watsons just calling it “the doll.”

“Rose,” John says, and his lips curl into the slightest of smiles. “Though I call her Rosie. Silly, innit?” He still doesn’t look at Sherlock.

Sherlock shuffles to stand beside John, and takes his hand. “No. No sillier than a man named Sherlock.” 

John snorts and covers his mouth. His eyes meet Sherlock’s. “I don’t want to talk about it ever again.”

“Of course not. It’s horrible.”

John smiles in a way that’s sardonic and raw - the heaviness of his family history still straddles his shoulders, not yet ready to let go. 

Sherlock might help with that. He cured the limp, after all.

“Come, now. I’ve made room in the drawer below that one. I’ll work on the closet and in no time, you’ll be properly moved in.”

John nods, his eyes stealing to meet Sherlock’s and then away. He drops to his crouch over the drawers and continues placing god-awful jumpers in them.

Sherlock decides then and there that he will buy this man new clothes.

* * *

Sherlock’s a reasonable, rational man, no matter what others may say about him. It’s no surprise to him that he comes off as eccentric and a bit mad because he refuses to subscribe to social parameters - and it’s his logic that has brought him to this point. He also recognises his weaknesses - he’s moody, easily bored, prickly, and condescending. 

What he isn’t, is naturally fearful or superstitious. He doesn’t believe in astrology, organised religion, unorganised religion, ghosts, ESP, and other elements of the supernatural. The above-natural. From the Latin _supernaturalis_. “Above,” and “nature; that which we are born with.” 

We, meaning humans. But honestly, if a human exhibits an ability, then it’s natural to that person. The idea of the “supernatural” is superfluous, and rings as sensational poppycock to Sherlock.

What’s more, he’s not a fearful person - no jumping at strange shadows or odd noises. He’s not like the rest of the populace - suspicious of clowns or bothered by derelict houses, even if a horrific murder occurred there - that actually makes a derelict house all the more interesting, in his opinion. 

Yet the doll bothers him.

She sits in the corner of the room and faces the bed. 

The night before, John had initiated sex, and Sherlock was eager in his response. 

This morning, in the stark contrast of daylight, John nuzzles his neck. Sherlock’s cock begins to fill, but when he lifts his head to murmur his assent to John, he catches sight of the doll. 

Watching them.

His cock wilts. “John?” he says.

“Yeah?” John licks and kisses and bites his neck. It’s almost distracting, if not for the doll eyes on them.

“The doll - er, Rose, I mean. Rosie.”

John glances at the doll and back at Sherlock. “What?”

Sherlock blushes. It’s ridiculous. “I, uh…”

“It’s an inanimate object, Sherlock,” John says and Sherlock can see his smile from the corner of his eye. “Not real, right?” He chuckles and kisses Sherlock’s neck again.

It’s still watching.

“I…”

“Oh my god,” John shoves himself out of the bed. “Sherlock, are you telling me you have a fear of dolls? Is that what this has been about this whole time?”

“It’s looking at us,” Sherlock says. “It’s not alive, but I’m not into bisque faces watching me.”

John shakes his head and goes to the corner. He angles the chair so the doll faces the window more so than the bed. “Better?”

Sherlock burns with embarrassment. “It doesn’t matter,” he huffs.

John grins as he crawls back into the bed. “I like it. Sherlock Holmes has a bit of a weakness and it involves child’s playthings.”

Sherlock sputters. “A weakness? John - I - the nerve!”

John laughs as he tackles Sherlock to the mattress. Sherlock starts to protest but John swallows his words with a kiss, and Sherlock is lost beneath the clever man’s administrations.

* * *

_London Bridge is falling down,_

_Falling down,_

_Falling down_

_London Bridge is falling down,_

_My fair lady._

The singsong rhyme in the voice of a little girl floats through the air like a speck of dust, aimless and gossamer. Sherlock steps down the hall. Beneath his feet is a Persian rug, old and worn by years of use. Moonlight spills through the windows, creating long, tilted rectangles of blue-grey light along the floor. At the end of the hall is a door. 

Sherlock strains to listen. The child’s voice is coming through the door. It’s at once familiar and new. An ornate, iron door knob on a heavy wood door that he knows would shine in a high gloss by the light of day. As it is now, the brass sconces along the wall are turned off, and the door is shrouded in shadow. 

The air stinks of smoke and burning plastic, wood ash and charred flesh. 

His heart pounds against his breastbone as he approaches the door. No light shines from the keyhole or the crack beneath the door, but when he raises his hand, he can feel the heat as it radiates through the knob. He pulls his hand back. 

The handle moves - someone must be on the other side. In the fire? The clicking of latches riddle the air as the lever depresses. The door creaks open and instead of the fiery blaze Sherlock expects, it’s something far more surprising.

A room filled with dolls.

Sherlock wakes with a start. Sweat lays cold along his shoulders and in the dips of his clavicles. For a second, he can think only of those dolls: beady-eyed, malicious, dead gazes all. Bisque and China dolls. Plastic dolls and cloth dolls. Joyous, innocent smiles turned eerie and sinister. A roomful of dolls, their sightless eyes settled on him.

He shudders - and then he hears it, the soft whisper to the right of the bed. It slips over him like the sweep of silk, a cord intended to strangle, the shroud intended for burial. In the darkness, his and John’s breathing can be heard, but also the low, disquieting noise of words dragged through reedy vocal cords.

Sherlock’s tongue lays numb in his mouth. He couldn’t shout for John if he tried. His breath has turned shallow, and his body is still, as if he could disappear, camouflage right into the sheets. 

It won’t happen. With his large body and his dark curls, he would be more obvious than John in this bed to any onlooker.

He turns his head, slowly, so slowly. He’s reminded of _The Tell-Tale Heart,_ and the old vulture’s eye trained on the entry of the man who intends to murder him. How the narrator turned the door handle so slowly the time on the clock had turned an hour by the time the narrator tipped their head inside the door.

Sherlock moves faster, but he thought of that story all the same, for as slowly as he turned.

A bowed shape lingers at the bedside. As his eyes adjust, he realises it’s John, sitting at the edge with his head lowered. The whispering comes from him. 

Sherlock narrows his eyes as he strains to listen. Tilts his head. 

“No, no, no,” John’s saying. “That won’t work. I won’t do it.” At least, it sounds like that’s what he’s saying. 

“John?” Sherlock says.

John goes still. His shoulders are drawn up and his back is to Sherlock.

“Are you talking to someone?” Sherlock moves slowly, leans on one elbow to get a better look. Just past John, he can see the shadowy figure of the doll in the chair. 

John doesn’t move. The hairs on the back of Sherlock’s neck raise as goosebumps riddle his arms. He tries again. “John?”

No answer. Sherlock leans up and rolls over to place a hand on John’s shoulder. He ignores the gaze of the doll as he gently presses John onto his back, head on his pillow. John goes as meekly as a sleeping child, except his eyes stare up at the ceiling. Sherlock pulls the covers over him. “John?”

John’s eyes are unblinking. He’s warm to the touch but the room is cold; colder than it should be.

_Dreaming? Sleepwalking?_

John’s eyes close. Sherlock watches, lying still and quiet. Within minutes, John’s mouth falls open and curls of breath erupt in soft snores. 

Sherlock lifts his chin to see the doll. John had faced it away from their bed the other day, but now in the congealing darkness, he can see the glint of glass eyes fixed on them. 

Sherlock slides one arm over John’s chest, and lays his head on the pillow, where he can keep the doll in sight until the dawn arrives.


	4. Odd Movements

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments!! <3

The doll sits in the chair, angled toward the window. It looks peaceful, as if it’s gazing out the window onto the next building. Maybe listening for birds or watching for rats in the alleyway. Maybe broadcasting sinister thoughts to fellow creepy dolls in other bedrooms and attics across London. 

Sherlock stands in the doorway. John’s decided he needs to get back to work, so he’s gone on some job interview at a surgery. Sherlock thought it was ridiculous, but John bridled at the idea of being some kind of “kept man,” living off of Sherlock’s trust fund. Sherlock doesn’t mind; he prefers having John available for cases. For watching the telly. For sex. Even for conversation. 

But John didn’t listen to his arguments. Idiot.

The light from the window is diluted through the sheers like a thin, morning fog. Sherlock walks away after mapping the profile of the doll to his Mind Palace.

He steps into the lounge, where his bat taxidermy is once again facing the opposite direction. The skull is angled to the wall. Sherlock scans the room. The poster of the skull hangs upside down. He draws a breath.  _ John’s idea of a practical joke? _

With a huff, Sherlock goes back to his room to grab his fingerprinting kit. The need to know seizes him: a mystery to solve, and without cases at the moment, it’s the number one mystery around. 

He steps into the bedroom and heads for the bed. His kit is tucked underneath, along with some other tools. He slides partway beneath, and pulls out the black, plastic case along with a few dust bunnies. As he comes to a stand, the doll’s unexpected visage shocks him.

It was turned to the window. Now, it faces the bed. It faces him. Looks at him.

Sherlock glances around. He’s heard no footsteps. No one is in the room with him. He swings open the bathroom door and looks inside. Pushes aside the shower curtain. No one. He crosses the kitchen to the lounge, his ears straining for the sounds of footsteps or breathing. He glances at the catch of every window - all locked. The items in the lounge are still in their places - misplaced, as it were. It throws off the dynamic of the room and how he remembers it; snarls the static setup that he keeps in his Mind Palace. 

Glass shatters in the kitchen.

He whirls around and launches himself through the sliding doors. One of his flasks lies in glittering pieces on the linoleum floor, like bits of mica in the surface of rock. No one’s there. The sound still rings in his ears.

He looks at the rest of the flaskware. They’d been washed by John himself, and placed far from anywhere they could fall, unless some devious cat had come along and for the hell of it, shoved the item onto the floor. 

A cat, then? No way for one to get in here, unless Mrs Hudson allowed one through the front door.

He leans his head out into the hall. “Mrs Hudson!”

He scans the room again. Nothing has moved.

He clutches the fingerprinting kit with a vise-grip.

“Mrs Hudson!” he bellows down the stairs. The groan of her door opening carries up the stairs.

“My goodness, what is it?” she calls up to him.

“Have you let in a cat?”

“A cat?” She sounds flabbergasted. “What on earth - why would I let in a cat?”

She’s mumbling about something while he again reviews everything he’s seen. A cat wouldn’t perfectly move the taxidermy or the skull to face the mantle like that, or be able to flip the skull poster upside down. 

“Nothing, it’s nothing! Go back to your room and lock the door!”

“Lock the door?” He hears her say as he shuts his door and locks it. He’d been leaving it open so that when Mrs Hudson opened the front door to clients, they could come right to the lounge.

So he locks that door, and the other one in the kitchen. Thinks about the door to John’s room, but only John goes up there, and he hasn’t reported anything strange. 

He remembers John sitting on the bed, whispering. John, who apparently talks to himself or to that doll, and has no memory of it. When Sherlock had questioned him about sitting up in the night, John swore he’d never been sleepwalking in his life, nor did he remember getting up. 

Sherlock pushes air through his teeth. He opens the fingerprinting kit and gets to work, gloves on, brush in hand, lightly coating the dust over each of the objects that have been disturbed.

He does the doll last. 

When he enters the bedroom, she’s moved again. Angled to the window.

Sherlock pauses. The doll…? But no, this is an inanimate object. Not alive. Something, someone, is in the flat and playing a trick on him. 

He’s closed every door, including the sliding doors between the lounge and kitchen. If someone moves through them, he’ll hear. 

He bends close to the doll. He’s never touched her before, and now it fills him with a sense of distaste to have to take her from her chair and move the brush over her face and her arms, and the dress. The vapid stare and the impish curl of a smile is to be ignored. Instead he concentrates on the application of the black powder. He lifts the fingerprints he does find. 

While working, he files through his Mind Palace for knowledge on children’s toys. It’s spare. He’d had a sword and a pirate hat and drew maps for buried treasure as a child. He’s pretty sure Mycroft was never a child, and therefore had no toys. But he did love his books. Sherlock can remember books, and perhaps a few stuffed animals, though that seems vague. Unimportant. Building blocks. No dolls. No action figures. Jacks. Toy airplanes and trains and cars. Kites for windy days. Puzzles.

His parents didn’t keep any dolls, none of those expensive, kids-can’t-play-with-these kind. Half of their house had been like a museum - untouchable Victorian furniture that was heavy and smelled of dust and cobwebs. In the parts of the house where they spent the most time, the furniture was soft, used, meant to be sat in. Sherlock bounced on chairs or in his bed, jumping and jumping until he thought he might float off and away like a hot air balloon.

He thinks again of his dream of the room with the dolls. It was so vivid, as if he’d been there. The long hallways, the dark door. A lingering odour of petrol over the smell of burning rubber. Moonlight in the shape of the windpanes along the floor.

He moves out into the kitchen. The flask is still in pieces on the floor, but he’s got better things to do. He takes out his notebook where he’s filed away John’s prints, and Mrs Hudson’s, and others, and begins to compare. 

The skull, first.

His own prints. That’s to be expected.

The same as the case holding the bat. And the skull poster. All Sherlock’s. Not a single print, not even a partial, of anyone else. Unless the person moving them was wearing gloves.

Or didn’t have fingerprints.

Had to be someone wearing gloves. Sherlock would have remembered moving the items around.

Next came the doll.

John’s prints were on the doll, of course, and prints he’d matched with Harry’s (he’d lifted her prints from some of John’s things early on). 

But also, his own.

Sherlock stands. It’s impossible. He would remember. And he’s never touched this doll.

A tune sounds from the bedroom. A voice. A song.

_ “London bridge is falling down…” _

A child’s singing.

Sherlock tears into the room as if some hell-beast were at his heels. The doll, still coated in soot-like traces of fingerprint dust, faces the window. The light is dimming.

Sherlock stands in the middle of his bedroom. He pulls in air with short gulps. His hands shake as he stares at the doll.

“Do you have something to say?” he asks, his voice dripping with anger. 

Nothing. 

“Say it,” Sherlock speaks through gritted teeth. His insides quake like he’s just got off the ride at some deplorable carnival.

The doll doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. 

_ It’s a mere doll _ .  _ A doll. Am I hearing things? Is it possible... _

Something  _ is _ going on here. He isn’t prone to hallucinations, auditory or visual. If no one else is in the flat, what else can it be? The doll is immobile, without spirit, never was mortal, and never alive. Is it a gas? A drug? He thinks back on what he’s ingested for breakfast. John is the guileless type - or maybe he isn’t? Is this all part of a long con, a man who’s decided to go toe-to-toe with consulting detective Sherlock Holmes? 

Is John the puzzle?

Sherlock shakes his head. No one can be that good.

Well, except for maybe he. Or Mycroft.

But if they could do it…

Sherlock stalks across the room. He’s had enough. If anyone is drugging him, gassing him, conning him, the most likely place to put a bug or camera would be this old doll itself, right? Right in his bedroom after he falls for the seemingly ordinary man that can conduct light?

An ache crackles in his chest as he snatches up the doll, thinking about John possibly being false. Being not who Sherlock thinks he is. It hurts. Like someone’s stabbing him with needles over and over. 

Sherlock lifts the back of the doll’s hair, considering what he’s about to do. If he dissembles the doll in search of a camera - the doll’s eyes, of course - and turns out to be wrong, John will be upset with him. 

The head is unglazed porcelain, but the body is ball-jointed and made of another material. Smudges of the black fingerprint dust come off onto Sherlock’s hands as he handles her. Perhaps he could unscrew it, or pry the head from the body. 

“What are you doing?” John stands inside the doorframe, his eyes lasered in on the doll in Sherlock’s hands.

Sherlock had been so absorbed in what he was doing, he hadn’t heard John come in. 

The wrinkle in the center of John’s forehead suggests he is perplexed, and perhaps appalled, and the parting of his lips suggests he’s thinking of something else to say - he’s becoming indignant. 

“John,” Sherlock says, desperate to make him understand. “My fingerprints are on this doll and I have never touched this doll.”

“What is that black stuff on her?” John charges forward, his hand outstretched. 

“It. John, it’s an ‘it.’”

John’s eyes narrow as his mouth sets in a hard line. That bulldog look he gets, where he squares himself up like he’s forming an impenetrable wall. John Wall-tson.

“What’ve you got all over her?” He places an emphasis on ‘her.’

“Fingerprint powder. It’s composed of black ferric oxide and rosin -”

“Why?” When John wants an answer and isn’t sure he’s going to like the answer, his brow hoods his eyes as he tilts his chin downward. Like he’s thinking about headbutting you, gearing up like a bighorn sheep lines its vertebrae up to prepare for impact. 

“It moves, John. And other things in the flat are moving and I want to know who’s moving them.” Sherlock watches for his reaction.

John startles. He clearly didn’t expect anything like that. Sherlock begins to rethink the option that involves John being some kind of criminal mastermind. “What do you mean it moves?”

“It moves. Earlier, it was facing the window. I came in here because I found my bat and my skull and my poster moved, so I came in here for my fingerprint kit -”

John grabs the doll to inspect her. His face draws darker as he looks over the black smears of powder on her dress and over her face. “Oh my god, Sherlock, will this even wash out?”

“Of course -”

“What has gotten into you?”

“John. Last night, you were talking to the doll -”

“What?”

Frustration wells up inside him like a burst dam, and he blurts, “I don’t want her in our bedroom anymore.”

A pause. John tilts his head. Sniffs. “It’s  _ her, _ now?”

Sherlock draws a sharp breath. “It,” he says.

“Sherlock, this doll -”

“It’s very special to you, I know. But something is going on in this flat. And frankly, John, I’ve asked you to place the doll such that it won’t face the bed and somehow, it keeps getting moved to face the bed.”

“I can’t believe you,” John says as he starts to pace. “The  _ doll? _ Really, Sherlock?”

“What?” Sherlock says.

“You’re going to use the doll to break it off with me?” John’s face is turning crimson.

“What?” Sherlock is stunned. “I never said I was breaking up with you!”

John heads out the door, mumbling as he goes, with the doll gripped in his hands. Sherlock can hear snippets, “bloody berk - I can’t believe - and we live together and I knew this was bad -”

And as the low current of words tumble from his lips, and his rage-sniffs and his set shoulders and his flexed fists all feed into Sherlock’s intake, Sherlock hears somewhere, as if in the distance, a little girl singing  _ “London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down…” _

He grabs hold of his curls and in a thunderous voice, says:  _ “John, stop!” _

John whirls around like a wildcat, spitting and fur flying, eyes glinting with danger. “No! You stop! This is ridiculous! Act like a grown man for once! It’s just a  _ doll, _ but she is very important to me!”

“More important than me?” Sherlock says.

He hadn’t meant to say that.

A stillness hangs in the air, like the eye of the storm. The noise has receded, and the respite begins: take a breath. Lean back. Wait for the storm to fall again. 

His thoughts stall, and his heartbeat stutters. John stares at him. Without a word he turns about - he never took off his shoes or his jacket - and he leaves, taking the doll with him. Sherlock’s heart grows smaller with each of John’s steps down the stairs, until it’s nothing but dust with the click-shut of the front door.

He slumps to the ground, one hand placed over the cavity of his chest. 


	5. A History

He stands outside a block of flats in Clapham Junction, as tall and as rigid as a lamp post. An iron gate bars the way to five steps, across two pavers, and then up five steps to a door painted burgundy red. Rather like blood beginning to dry.

The sky glowers in grey, if one could imagine a sky glowering. It’s a preposterous thought, but Sherlock’s been having a lot of strange thoughts lately. It’s no more grey nor gloomy than any other London sky in early March, but still, it depresses him. 

He opens the gate, walks down the five steps made of rough concrete, across the two pavers, and up the next five steps. Rings the doorbell. It’s loud and jarring and no doubt the entire building can hear it. 

The woman who answers is short, with blonde, fluffy hair gilded with silver. She has an upturned nose and the same fathomless dark sea-blue eyes as John. 

“Harriet Watson,” Sherlock says.

Harriet takes a step back. She tilts her chin up and draws her shoulders back. It’s so like John the breath leaves Sherlock for an instant.

“Who wants to know?” The crow’s feet around her eyes are deep and downturned. Broken red vessels in her nose mar the otherwise smooth, pale skin of her face. 

“I’m Sherlock Holmes,” he says. He means to ask if John is here, but her face lights up and she opens the door wider, revealing a colourful, crocheted shawl that swamps her upper body over a pair of ripped dungarees. On her feet are thick, brown woolen socks, no shoes. 

“Him from the blog, then?” she asks. “The one Johnny’s gone nuts over? Oh, do come in!”

She doesn’t quite smile, though she tries, and she seems very curious, her eyes raking him over. 

“You must have the ground floor,” he says as he follows her through.

“Yes, and that doorbell makes a bloody racket. No use waiting on any of the feckless layabouts upstairs to come and answer the door on time.” She leads him through the door into her flat. It’s cozy, a bit cluttered, adorned with potted fake flowers and macrame wall hangings. More crocheted throws on the overstuffed sofa and chairs, a bowl of potpourri on the honey-brown coffee table. A shag carpet covers the floor. No sign of empty bottles anywhere, though the air is redolent with cigarette smell, and the ashtray on the kitchen table overflows with butts. Yellow ducks in bluebonnets border the kitchen walls. Sherlock can picture John here, in among the mismatched pillows, handmade throws, and assembled crockery. Shadow boxes and shelves on the wall are loaded with figurines, nutcrackers, and glass bells. The front window bears a hanging spider plant, gravid with tiny spider plants, all appearing as if they might fall off at any second.  _ Rock-a-bye baby in the treetop… _

Harry points to a chair. “Do have a seat. Can I offer you some tea?”

“Is John here?” he asks.

Harry peers closely at him. “No, why would he be? Did you two have a domestic?”

Sherlock restrains himself from rolling his eyes. He decides to just launch into it. No use prevaricating, and small talk just makes him grind his teeth until they threaten to crack. “It appears he’s quite attached to the doll that belonged to your parents.”

“That old thing? Weird, right? He was adamant about taking it with him. I said, ‘why on earth do you want that out of all their things?’” She gestures around the room. “You think I collected all these Hummels and Lladr ó s and whatnot? They’re inherited. I’d have thought he’d want the soldier Hummel, there on that shelf, or the doctor.”

Sherlock can see them from where he stands. Each of the figurines are round-cheeked, blond boys. The soldier waits at attention, a rifle as long as him at his side. The doctor is more unisex, might be a girl, staring down at a broken doll. 

A broken doll.

“And if he didn’t want to hold onto them, probably could’ve sold them for a few hundred quid.” She settles on the sofa, pulling the shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I figure if it ever comes down to it, I could sell the whole lot and put a downpayment on a house out in the suburbs.”

Sherlock’s lip curls. “You mean to say he wanted to bring the doll with him? You didn’t ask him to take it with him?”

Her eyes widen, just a bit. “No. Clara and I thought the doll was hilarious. We love that shit - ouija boards and scary movies and rubber skeletons, all that. We’d bring the doll out for the month of October, along with all the decorations, and do up the whole flat. The doll was the highlight. Right creepy.” She laughs as she pushes back a bit of blonde curl. “Our friends thought it was a laugh. Though some wouldn’t even stay in the same room as it.”

Sherlock’s stomach tightens. It was a lie. John lied to him about the doll. 

Was he embarrassed? 

“And when John was here, how did he find the doll? He wouldn’t have been here in October.”

“He stayed in the guest room before he got that bedsit. The doll was there in a box, and I guess he thought he’d go pokin’ about. Found it.” She frowns. “Seemed right mad that I’d hidden it away. It was nothing but a dusty, creepy old doll. But I know it reminded him of our parents.” A shadow flickers across her face as a corner of her mouth pulls down.

“He told me about your parents,” Sherlock says. 

“Just like that, huh?” she says with a loud exhale. “He must like you a lot then. He doesn’t talk about it.” She leans forward. “Don’t you worry. Johnny has a temper, but he’ll come ‘round. He has a strong sense of doing what’s right.”

“Harry,” he says. Presses his tongue to the cage of his teeth as he considers his words. “Did the doll ever seem strange?”

She lifts her brows. “You mean beyond the creep factor?” She glances around the room as if looking for the answer. Folds her hands in her lap. “Well, the history, I suppose. Nana said some strange things about the doll before she died.”

Sherlock sits in the chair across from her. “What did she say? Tell me everything.”

Harry leans back in her seat. Her fingers twist a strand of hair. “Well, I...I haven’t even told John this. It was such nonsense. I haven’t thought about it in ages.”

“Harriet - Harry, I need you to tell me everything, anything, that anyone ever told you about the doll.”

She tilts her head and searches his face. “Are you having me on?”

Sherlock shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut, and opens them. Her face fills his field of vision. “Please. Tell me whatever you can remember.”

“Um, okay,” she says, and digs her fingers into the crocheted holes of the shawl. “Well, it was when she was dying. She had dementia. It wasn’t pretty. Living in one of those homes for old folks and she hated it there. Mum and I were cleaning out her house and we’d visit her sometimes. John was young, and Mum didn’t want him to see Nana like that. But she thought I should, so I knew what death looked like.” Harry’s eyes float to the far corner of the ceiling as a shudder runs through her. “I guess she thought it would be good for me, circle of life and all that. Anyway, Mum was boxing up Nana’s dolls - she had a collection - and she’d found one separate from all the others in the basement. She asked Nana about it, wondering if it might be worth anything, and Nana told her...well, what she said was crazy.”

“What did she say?” Sherlock’s voice is low like the hum of an engine.

“She said that that was the doll that made her kill Granddad.”

Sherlock rocks back in his seat. “Your grandmother killed your grandfather?”

“She said she did. Because otherwise he was going to kill her. She pushed him down the stairs when he went after her, and the fall broke his neck.” Her eyes glimmer. “He told her the doll made him ‘kill those people,’ and now he was going to have to kill her.”

“Who were those people?”

Harry shrugs. She looks rather small, like a mouse huddled beneath the layers of yarn. “He might have killed people while fighting in the war. Mum told Nana she should stop talking - you know, if he hit her, if he threatened her, and she protected herself, what could be done about that? Good riddance to him, if that’s what happened. And if he was going to kill other people? Good Lord, she might have saved lives.” Harry twists the shawl with her fingers as her eyes glaze over. “God, I must’ve been about fifteen or sixteen? My skin was alive with goosebumps. I told that story to Clara and she told me to never tell our friends. Would’ve been taking it too far.”

She glances at Sherlock. “And you know, it’s just a doll. Granddad was crazy, or a murderer, or something, and whatever he had, my father had, too.” She twists the shawl harder. “Just wish I had seen it coming. I know Johnny thinks I should’ve seen it coming. He’s probably right. Da was acting a bit strange, Mum said. Nothing dangerous like. She thought he might be getting dementia like his mum had. He didn’t remember things. Sometimes he was talking to himself and Mum had no idea what he was talking about. But he was never belligerent, you know what I mean? I didn’t think anything about it. Thought we should get some help, see a doctor or something.” Her eyes are dry, but her voice is growing flat. Deadpan. Like John’s when he’d told Sherlock about his parents. “It was a shock. A big shock. I never cried so much in my life.”

Sherlock nods.

Harry inhales, holds it, lets it out in a rush of air. “The other thing - and I haven’t thought about this in a long, long time - that my Nana said about the doll, is that it would talk to her. That’s why she put it in the basement. So she couldn’t hear it. It made her sad to think of Granddad.”

Sherlock narrows his eyes. “And you brought it into your home and put it out as a holiday decoration?”

“It was Clara’s idea. She didn’t know the story, then. I told her later.” She rubs her fingers together in her lap. “I could hardly say no to her for anything at that point.”

“Because you had started the drinking again, and you were hiding it from her.”

Harry stares at him. “John’s right. You are good.” She barks out a laugh. “Yeah. I was drinking then. I’m not drinking now. We’re working towards reconciliation.”

Sherlock tries to give her a smile as his mind whirls with the possibilities, like a toy whose string has been pulled and the gears turn. “And no one else ever heard the doll speak?”

Harry’s nose wrinkles. “Good Lord, no. My nan was a bit nuts. The doll is just a  _ thing.  _ It can’t  _ talk. _ ”

“And did you or Clara ever suffer from strange dreams while the doll resided here?”

“No. Nothing unusual - dreams normally are strange, aren’t they?” Harry’s staring at him in askance. “What’s going on over at your flat? Where is John? Is he okay?” Her pitch heightens with each question.

“I will find him,” Sherlock promises. “He was fine when he left, only angry.”

“Then what’s all this about the doll? You’re not saying - you’re not saying you believe any of this are you? Is John acting strange? Is he talking to the doll?” She jumps up and snatches her purse from the other chair. 

“It’s only, he’s rather attached -”

She brings out her mobile - latest model. No scratches. “I’ll call him right now,” she says.

“No!” Sherlock says.

She pauses to look at him. Her face gets the same steely Watson look. “You’re not to tell me what to do.”

“I only mean - please. No. I will find John and I will have him call you as soon as I do. I’m sure he’s blowing off steam somewhere. And perhaps all this nonsense with the doll has to do with the doll’s history.”

“He doesn’t know what Nana said. I never told him.” Her eyes take on a wild gleam.

“It’s to do with your parents, then.”

Harry deflates, phone clutched in both hands. “I know he doesn’t just blame me. He blames himself, too.”

“So he’s...acting out…” Psychology isn’t his strong point, he realizes. Perhaps when it came to the psychology of criminals, but to grief? He’s a near stranger to grief. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I only wished to know about the doll so that when I speak with him next, I will have a better understanding.” There. Hopefully, she buys that.

She seems to. Because she nods, slowly, inhales, exhales. “Okay. But do have John call as soon as you find him, yeah?”

“Yes. Thank you, Harry.” He stands. “This conversation has been most enlightening.”

Her lips are parted, the corners still bowed. “Find him, please. And treat him well. That’s my baby brother, you know.”

Sherlock tries to give her his best smile, all teeth, all pleased as punch. “I’m someone’s baby brother, too. I know how protective elder siblings can be.”

Harry gives him a wan smile and looks back at her phone, as if she’s still unsure.

Well, either she’ll call John or she won’t. Sherlock strides out the door, leaving her to stare at the mobile in her hands.


	6. A Return

Sherlock takes the long way home, going through Regent’s Park on foot and taking the streets he knows John likes to walk. He’s tempted to ask store owners if a man walked by carrying a child’s doll the size of a toddler, but he refrains. 

A laugh-track from Mrs Hudson’s telly greets him when he opens the front door of 221B, muffled by her closed door. It seems apt.

As he walks up the stairs, he gets the sense that a presence lurks in his flat. He pauses. Notes the time and checks the steps for signs of mud or debris. It was a dry day aside from the light fog that started to rise with the twilight, but he looks anyway. 

A floorboard creaks above him.

He steps, cat-like, up the stairs, and peers into the open door - he didn’t leave it that way when he went in search of John. 

John stands in the center of the lounge, empty-handed. He seems relieved to see Sherlock - his hands press on his stomach and his lips part on a soft exhale. “Hi.” A smile is slow to cross his face. “Will you come in and sit?”

From one Watson to another. Sherlock wants to say, ‘You should call your sister,’ but he instead walks in and sits in his chair. John sits in the chair opposite him - the old, worn, floral-print chair that he’s come to think of as ‘John’s chair,’ and he leans forward, elbows to knees. He drags one hand over his mouth and then presses his hands together. “Listen, I want - I want to apologise. I...clearly I have some things I need to talk about with Ella.”

“Are you still seeing her?” Sherlock asks.

“I haven’t been in a month,” John admits. His eyes meet Sherlock’s. “You’re the one that cured me, after all.”

Sherlock is certain that someone’s therapist and lover shouldn’t be the same person, but he can’t help but preen at John’s acknowledgement. 

“I’m going back, though. I have some issues to work through.” He clears his throat. It seems like it should echo throughout the room for as loud as it is in the dim quiet of the flat. “So. You’re very important to me. I know...I know we intended for this to be casual, and that we’d...we’d take it slow. But I thought you should know that you are important to me.” His eyes search Sherlock’s face. “Very important.”

Sherlock’s pulse lifts. “Good,” he says, though he almost stumbles over the word as it exits his mouth. “That’s....thank you.”

“And I’m important to you?” John says.

Sherlock lowers his eyes to the ground. “Yes, John. You are.”

“And not just to the Work?”

Sherlock meets his gaze, letting a small smile slip onto his lips. “No, not just to the Work.”

John’s smile meets his, and it’s wonderful, like sugar and starlight and cocaine.

He scratches behind one ear as his eyes duck away. “I, um, I found a pawn shop, and I sold the doll.”

Sherlock perks up. “You did?”

“Yeah. You know, I realised that it was holding me back. Maybe holding us back. My parents...my parents died a long time ago. It’s been years, and though I’ll never forget them, or feel at peace with what happened, I shouldn’t let it control my future. So here. Right now. I’m leaving the past behind. And I’m moving forward, with you. _You_ are my future.”

Sherlock is incandescent with feeling. His face must glow like a nightlight, or a firefly - no, something more. A lighthouse. Blaring from the jagged, foggy coast. It’s unnerving, off-putting. Frightening, even. But as he looks at John - brave, solid John - he decides this time, he won’t push the feelings away. 

He leans forward and holds out his hand. John takes it, and Sherlock hopes John doesn’t notice the slight tremble of his fingers. 

“Am I forgiven?” John says, his eyes locked on Sherlock’s.

“Yes,” Sherlock says, and pulls John into his lap. 

* * *

John is _enchanting._ His skin glistens with sweat in the golden glow of the lamplight. He’s on his back, his face twisted with ecstasy, his lips parted and his eyes shut. The cries that fall from his mouth as Sherlock rocks his hips sound reverent to Sherlock’s ears. Here in his bed, John shines like a beacon in the dark. He’s shorter by half a foot, but proportionate for his body, solid and strong. He tastes of copper and salt and Sherlock swears he can smell the blood pumping below. It’s as if he’s bespelled. Ever since this man walked into that lab, Sherlock has been bewitched. John’s influence weaves about him, polishes his rough edges, cradles him close - and Sherlock has never been close to anyone like this. 

“Kiss me,” John pants, his eyes open now, watching Sherlock. Sherlock bends down with John’s legs wrapped around him. Meets his lips, holds him, fucks him slowly. Sex has never been like this, John’s hands in his hair, tugging at the roots, writhing below him, whining and moaning. He’s so hot and so tight around Sherlock’s cock. This isn’t just sex; it’s like two halves of a soul meeting and melding back into place with one another. 

John releases him and arches his back. “Oh god!” he cries out, and one hand goes to his cock. Sherlock grabs John’s legs and hefts them over his shoulder, snaps his hips into John’s arse, his bollocks slapping against the skin. He watches, catalogues everything, like taking snapshots - John’s face in a rictus of pleasure, his hand pulling at his fat cock, and the juncture where Sherlock’s cock disappeared into his arse. 

Sherlock’s orgasm starts in the scoop of his hips and ripples outward, tearing through him in a gathering tsunami of pleasure, muscles contracting and cock shooting into the condom. John’s hand flies over his own cock, and in the next moment, he shoots semen up his belly and chest, hitting his chin. He roars through his release.

In his haze, Sherlock dives forward to lick the bit from his chin, and savour that particular flavour of John Watson. 

John Watson is _delicious._

In the afterglow, when they’re cleaned up and resting in each other’s arms, John whispers to him, “I didn’t know it was you I was looking for all my life.”

A lump moves into Sherlock’s throat, and his hold tightens in answer.

* * *

The odour of gasoline saturates the air. A scratching to his left. He looks. 

A doll stands there - not John’s doll. This one has dark hair that curls at the end. When she lifts her face to look at Sherlock, her pale glass eyes gleam in the low light of the hallway. In her little white hands are a matchbook and a match. The scratching was the rough scrape of match-head to striker. 

_Petrol._

The doll smiles as she lifts the match to the striker again.

“No!” Sherlock throws one hand out.

“Sherlock!”

John shakes him. Sherlock jerks upright, the word “No!” ripping up from his diaphragm and out his mouth like a thunderous geyser.

“Sherlock, you were dreaming,” John says.

Sherlock whips his head around the room, peering into the thick shadows. One strip of light enters through the curtains like the blade of a knife. “A fire,” he says.

“There was a fire?”

“Nearly,” Sherlock says. “The doll -” He shuts his mouth when he remembers who he’s speaking to - shuts it so hard his teeth clack together.

John moves closer to him. “Lie down. I’ll give you a back rub.”

Adrenaline pumps in his chest and his limbs even as he lets John guide him down to the mattress. “I’m not a child,” he says. In the dream, he’d been not much taller than the brunette doll with the bone-pale skin. 

“No, you’re not,” John says.

Sherlock shoves his face into his pillow as John curls toward him, slinging one of his legs over Sherlock’s legs. His right hand strokes Sherlock’s back, smoothing over the dip of his spine and sliding up and over the slope of his shoulders. 

He closes his eyes, thinking of the pale eyes of the doll, and the sinister intentions he thought lay there.

* * *

John strokes his curls with care, letting the strands twirl around his fingers. Sherlock is lulled to the edge of sleep. On the telly is some old Bond film. The rule during these films is Sherlock is not allowed to deduce anything or discuss the unbelievable parts of the plot. “It ruins the effect,” John told him. “It’s meant to be make-believe.”

Sherlock turns his head into John’s stomach and breathes in. Televised gunshots punch the air. The scents of soap and cotton and skin fill his nostrils, and he sighs.

“Everything alright?” John says to him.

“Perfect,” Sherlock says, half-muffled by John’s shirt.

John slides his hand beneath Sherlock’s head and lets him part way up and he bends down. Kisses Sherlock’s temple. 

Sherlock smiles as John settles him back in his lap. One of John’s fingers follows the outline of Sherlock’s ear, and Sherlock drifts through his Mind Palace, building on the room he’s assigned as John’s. 

Something has been bothering him. It’s not...it’s not that he doesn’t believe John. John sold the doll. The doll is no longer in the flat.

So why is he still having these dreams?

And why was the skull facing the wall again earlier?

The bat, too. 

Sherlock tries to push it away and continue the build on John’s room. 

The only prints on the skull and the bat case were his own. Has he been sleepwalking? Was he locked in his Mind Palace and unaware of his surrounding environment? That’s happened. 

Somehow they’re here now in John’s room of his Mind Palace. The skull. The case containing the bat and the insects. Facing the wall. Along with John’s jumpers and his gun. 

And Rose in her rocking chair in the corner. 

His cell lights up.

“It’s Lestrade,” John says.

A case.

* * *

As they tumble into the flat, their lungs filled with laughter and their eyes filled with light, Sherlock is seized with a sense of profound rightness. John Watson is _right_ for Sherlock Holmes. He presses John into the wall and captures his mouth with his. John moans against him. 

They hurry up the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the bedroom. It’s quick and primal, clothes thrown on the floor and Sherlock bent over the bed as John slicks himself up and slides in. 

It’s perfect.

Sherlock falls asleep after he’s come and John has wiped them both clean. 

When he wakes, John is missing. 

Sherlock pads out to the kitchen. It’s past midnight. The streetlights glow through the curtains of the lounge like peeping toms. He expects to see John bowed over his laptop, perhaps infused with so much excitement over the ending of the case that he’s decided to write it all down while it’s fresh in his mind. 

Except he’s not there.

Sherlock walks to the center of the lounge. Overhead, weight shifts, a moan ripples through the floorboards.

Sherlock stills. Listens. Head tilted like a cat and every muscle as still as stone.

A murmuring chatter like water moving over river stones. A pause.

John is upstairs, in his old room. Sherlock’s near forgotten about the room, now that it only holds some of their extra things, things Sherlock has already prowled and poked through. 

Sherlock steps to the bottom of the stairs, listening. It’s definitely John. Talking.

_To who?_

Sherlock knows which of the steps will creak, so he skips over those as he climbs the stairs, his heart quiet in his chest, his breathing shallow. 

The door is ajar. Sherlock pushes it open, and looks.

John is seated in a patch of moonlight on the bed. The scene appears similar to the cover of a book of science fiction. His skin is bleached white from the light and his shoulders pull back while his head tips up toward the ceiling, the slope of his nose pointed to the heavens. 

In the shadows beside him sits Rose with her sickle-shaped smile.


	7. It's Time

“John,” he whispers, though the urge to shout is hot and volcanic in his veins. With a strike at the lightswitch, he floods the room with the overhead light. 

John snaps his eyes from the ceiling to him. They’re hard, like two grey marbles set in his face. 

Sherlock points to the doll. “What is she doing here?”

John’s gaze slides the doll and back to Sherlock. He blinks his eyes, almost as if he were waking. His mouth opens, closes, opens again. He turns and tilts his head as if he can hardly believe what Sherlock is saying to him. “What do you mean? This is where she lives.”

“John, you said you sold her to a pawn shop. You told me you sold her. That you were moving on and leaving her behind. That I -” The next words steal his breath. What he means to say - he is supposed to be John’s future.

John pulls back, giving him an incredulous stare. “Pardon me? I said no such thing.” He’s fully awake now. He’s John again. Not who he was before. Not with those stone grey eyes, and the blank look as flat as a doll’s stare. 

“John,” Sherlock says, his hands clasping together in front of him as he tries to make John understand. “You came home after that awful row we had, and told me you sold the doll. You said _I_ was important.” His feelings flit through him, become hard to catch, hard to contain. As insubstantial as smoke or fog. “You said I was your future.”

“Sherlock.” John gives a little laugh that cuts through the fog of Sherlock’s feelings like a blade of sun. He stands from the bed. “I - I never sold the doll. I never said that. And...you are important to me. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The world around Sherlock snaps, broken like a piece of plastic stressed beyond its threshold. He pushes the sense of upheaval aside and lifts his chin. “You don’t remember.”

“I have no earthly clue what you’re talking about. Are you feeling okay?”

“John,” Sherlock tries to hold his voice steady as fragmented thoughts pummel against the walls of his Mind Palace. “John, you said…” His hands ball into fists.

“I said I’d leave the doll up here. Away from our bedroom. Like you asked.”

“Like I -”

“Like you asked. I put her up here. I just…” He shrugs. “I came up here just for a moment. To think about my parents.”

Numbness crawls up Sherlock’s spine and into his throat. It infects his tongue and threatens to cloud his sight. “You said…” It’s a croak that pushes past the heavy weight of his tongue.

“You asked me to move the doll. So I did. I never said I’d sell her,” John says, as he shakes his head with a little smile. “Did you dream it, maybe? You’ve been having some strange dreams.”

The dolls all lined up on their shelves, their little half-moon smirks and sightless eyes on him no matter how he moves across the room. He’s small again, and the moonlight pours through the tall window. The scratch of a match against the strip. 

Petrol fumes in the air.

John’s father slices the throat of his wife and then his own - dying in the same room as this doll. John’s grandmother kills her husband. Hides the doll in her basement because “it talks” to her.

John having conversations with the doll, after he lied about Harry telling him to take the doll with him - a doll she only brought out for a holiday spook. 

Why did it never affect Harry? Or Clara? Is it all in fact a con? Is Harry working with John?

As much as it hurts him to think it…

Remove the doll, end the con.

“John, give me the doll,” Sherlock says.

John’s eyebrows draw together. “What?”

“Give me the doll.”

“I - I’m sorry. No. What? You said to move the doll, so I did. What on earth would you want with her?”

Sherlock lurches forward. John grabs the doll first and twists his body, shielding her from Sherlock’s outstretched arms. 

Sherlock dodges left, fakes right. John anticipates his move to go right, and is taken off guard as Sherlock barrels forward and shoves him up against the wall.

“You’ll break her!” he yelps.

Sherlock slides his left arm beneath John’s armpit and snakes up it over his shoulder to grasp John’s nape with his hand - a half-nelson.

John elbows him hard in the stomach. Sherlock pins him against the wall. His right hand slips between the wall and John, latching onto an arm of the doll. He keeps his upper weight against John and his feet braced against the floor, away from John’s angry stomps and kicks. 

John screams at him like a gutted animal. Sherlock _yanks._ He feels a ‘pop,’ and finds himself holding one arm of the doll. The body is still pinned between John and the wall. 

John releases a cry like he’s been sliced open. It’s the wail of a lost child. Sherlock holds him still, staring at the fake arm in his hand.

The fight has gone out of John, who sags against the wall. A thump echoes in the room. When Sherlock looks down, Rose lays on the floorboards between John’s feet. 

Sherlock releases his hold on John and steps back, the arm still in hand. Guilt clogs his chest as he looks at John, the man’s forearms braced against the wall. His shoulders lift and lower with his breathing. He staggers back. Sherlock steps away to give him room. John wipes his face with his hands, and then he cups his head. “Oh god, oh god,” he utters. “Sherlock. I - I don’t know what’s happened.” He pulls his hands down and looks at the doll. “What - what’s happened?” His hands tremble. Tears glisten on his cheeks.

No one can be this good. It can’t be a con. And how would he have moved those things in the flat - moved the doll - when no one else was there? Sherlock was the only one home and _the doll moved._ Impossible. But perhaps, it’s only improbable.

Sherlock steps forward and reaches for him with his free hand. John stares at him in disbelief as their hands close around one another’s. “I - I don’t know what’s happening to me,” John says in a small voice. 

“John,” Sherlock says in a low voice meant to be soothing. “It’s alright. Are you - are you feeling better?”

John touches his body and looks down at himself, as if he expects to see something else. He grabs Sherlock’s hand again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve...I’ve gone ‘round the bend, I think.” Tears glimmer in his eyes. “I need help.”

Sherlock nods and leads John to the bed. “Sit,” he says.

John slumps on the bed and cradles his head in his hands. “Get rid of the doll,” he mumbles. “Take her apart first. You - you must have to take her apart. It’s the only way. I think.”

“I’ll take her apart, and I’ll take her away,” Sherlock says. He picks the body off the ground, ignoring the almost baleful stare. “When you’ve pulled yourself together, come downstairs, and go back to bed.”

John’s face is covered by his hands. “It - it spoke to me.”

Sherlock tucks the body of the doll under his arm, and touches his shoulder. “It’ll be alright,” he says. “You’re alright.” 

John grunts. “Go on. Do it.”

Sherlock heads down the stairs. The doll is lightweight, likely no more than a kilogram. The popping sound was the ball joint of her elbow coming undone. 

He’ll learn more about her construction tonight.

In the kitchen, he opens one of the cabinets and brings out a metal box with a shiny latch. 

John’s old dissection kit.

* * *

Sherlock sits in the chair. Flames flicker the fireplace. Shadows stretch up the walls like they’re rising from their beds, extending and distorting long limbs and fingers. Demons distended along the halls of hell. 

He’s categorised everything he knows about the doll once called Rose in his Mind Palace. A foggy room with a strong lock holds his accompanying nightmares. He paces outside the door and considers the lock. 

A paper bag on the kitchen table holds the guts and parts of Rose. The top is rolled shut. He’d started by cracking open the skull, carefully, with controlled breaks. Sliced the inside plugs with a fresh scalpel blade and pulled the wig from the cranium with the help of the dissecting needle and the steel tweezers. Untied the apron and removed the dress, shoes, and stockings. Popped and unhooked the shoulder and hip joints to separate the limbs from the body, laying them in a row. He had to fetch his own razor saw to split open the composite body - cold-compressed sawdust and glue. All the parts were hollow. He lay the clothes in the bottom of the bag, followed by the torso halves, the limbs, the bisque pieces of the head, the wig, and last, the two glass eyes. 

John hasn’t come down yet.

Sherlock is wrapped in his dressing gown with his legs stretched toward the fire. He considers what Harry had told him - and as far as he can tell, there’s only one thing in common between John, his father, his grandfather, and his grandmother. A commonality that Harry Watson doesn’t share.

The stairs creak beneath John’s weight as he finally comes down, and then he’s in the doorway. He leans against the doorframe with his left shoulder and temple. His scarred side.

Sherlock extends his hand toward him. John shuffles over, takes it, and lets Sherlock pull him into his lap. Sherlock holds John around his waist, while John settles his arms around Sherlock’s neck, and drops his head.

“I don’t know what to say,” John says. “I don’t understand it and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“John, I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen,” Sherlock murmurs. 

John lifts his head. “What is it?”

“I know more about Rose’s - er, the doll’s - history.”

“You do?” 

“Yes. When you...when you walked out the other day and had supposedly sold her to a pawn shop, I visited Harry.”

“You visited Harry?” He seems surprised, and not in a good way.

“I was looking for you.”

John lowers his head to Sherlock’s. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Harry told me that when your grandmother was dying, she told your mother and Harry why she hid the doll in the basement.”

John tenses as if to shield himself against what Sherlock is about to say.

“After your grandfather died, the doll spoke to your grandmother. I don’t know what the doll said. But your grandmother told Harry and your mother that if she hid the doll away, she didn’t hear her as well.” Sherlock could well imagine it. The woman, alone in her home, whispers at the edges and in shadows, a presence lurking in the periphery of her life. Did she try to get out of the house as often as possible? Did she invite people in so she could take her focus from the whispers and instead to the conversation of the living? The human? Or did she spend her days pacing, pulling her hair, perhaps, shouting at nothing - _something_ \- to _stop talking._

He strokes John’s back as they sit. 

“So the crazy runs in the family, then?” John says.

“Not quite. Your grandmother, I assume, was not blood related to your grandfather?” 

“I hope not,” John says.

Sherlock almost smiles. “Well, before he died, she said that your grandfather told her the doll spoke to him. Encouraged him to...kill someone.”

“What?” John pulls back. “To kill someone?”

“John, your grandmother told your mother and your sister that she prevented him from killing anyone by killing him herself.”

John’s mouth falls open. He begins to struggle to get out of Sherlock’s lap, but Sherlock doesn’t make it easy for him. “What? That’s what Harry told you?”

“You were a child. They didn’t tell you because they wanted you to remember your grandmother for how she was, or some sentimental rot like that,” Sherlock says.

John makes some kind of strangled shout as he disentangles himself from Sherlock and begins to pace the room. “So, she killed him? Because he told her the doll told him to kill someone? That’s nuts, Sherlock!”

“I agree,” Sherlock says. “Which brings me to your father.”

John halts. His hands clench into fists. His breathing is hard, angry, and his shoulders jerk with each breath. He regards Sherlock with a deep frown, his eyes hosting that dangerous glint that Sherlock has long avoided having directed at him. “What about him?”

“You say your father once killed someone during his boxing career,” Sherlock says.

“Yeah.” 

“The doll was present in the room when he killed your mother and himself.”

“ _No._ ” John points a finger at him. “The doll was in the bedroom. Where he killed himself, not my mother. He killed her in the kitchen.”

Sherlock leans over to the coffee table and slides out a manila envelope from a pile of mail. “I had Mycroft look into it. He dragged her body into the kitchen. He killed her in the bedroom.” He rubs his chin. “I wonder if perhaps he killed himself due to the guilt, rather than anything the doll said.”

“ _Sherlock._ ” John’s face is crumbling. He covers his eyes with one hand.

Sherlock hops up and takes the man into his arms. “John. What each of you has in common is one thing: that is that each of you have taken a life, a human life. Your grandfather in the war, your grandmother in her own house, and your father in the boxing ring. You...”

A pained noise explodes from John, who fists the lapels of Sherlock’s dressing gown and buries his face in his chest. “But I - “

“Hush,” Sherlock says as he holds John tight. “She can’t hurt you now. She’s there, in the paper bag. I took her apart. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Oh my god,” John says, though his voice is clogged. Sherlock can feel wetness through the front of his thin pyjama tee. “Oh my god.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you,” Sherlock croons in his ear. “It’s over now. It’s over. Let’s go to bed.”

He guides John to the bedroom and helps him into bed. After taking off his dressing gown, he slides in beside his lover, his John, and spoons up to him, curls his big body around him, and holds him until John’s breath evens out and the tension melts from the man’s body.

After a while, he slips from the bed as quietly as he can, like a ghost floating across the floor. He closes the door behind him with a muffled _click_ of the latch. He flicks the lamp by the desk on for just a bit of amber light in the room, and unrolls the top of the bag.

Two glass eyes, the colour of twilight, gleam in a nest of faux hair.

A voice in his head chimes, 

_‘It’s time.’_


	8. A Story

He doesn’t need much light to work by. The dark-haired doll from his dreams sits beside him. She lights one match after another to help illuminate his work on Rose at the table. It’s painstaking, but he’s diligent as he fits the torso together and binds it, pops the joints back in, glues together the pieces of cranium, sews the wig into the plugholes, and sets the eyes back into place. His fingers are tacky with glue and dust and bits of thread, but Rose is coming back to life before his eyes. The smell of sulphur is strong in the air, and the constant commentary of the brunette doll beside him helps to keep him focused. 

_ ‘He’d have kept her from you, you know, if you hadn’t found him talking to her,’ _ the doll says.

“Yes,” he says, his voice a low whisper. 

_ ‘London bridge is falling down, falling down,’  _ she croons. He hates the little nursery rhyme - it gives him chills, niggles at a shadowy corner of his Mind Palace he’d long left behind. Some vision of the dark-haired doll asking him to play hide-and-seek. She carries a knife.

_ ‘I’ve missed you,’ _ she says.

“I’m right here,” he says.

_ ‘Yessss,’ _ she breathes, as if savouring the moment they’re sharing.

A  _ click _ and the kitchen light exposes them. Sherlock blinks to see John standing in the doorway of the bedroom. “What the fuck are you doing?” John says in a growl. “Who were you talking to?”

Sherlock looks to his right where the doll had sat. She’s gone. No matches. 

He can still smell the sulphur in the air.

In front of him, Rose sits on the table, reassembled. Her face is cracked and chipped, and he’s only just tied the apron on. She’s a miniature Frankenstein’s monster meets Raggedy Ann, in the body of an antique bisque doll. 

“I’m almost done,” he says to himself.

“No,” John says and he lifts up one finger. It shakes. “ _ No. _ You said - you said, oh my god, the things you said, were they all lies?"

All the signs of fear are there: the rapid blinking of his eyes, the shaking, and the licking of his lips. Anger is not far behind it: the flare of his nostrils and the wide stance of his legs. Sherlock says, “Do you mean the part where I said you come from a family of killers? No. That’s all true.”

John drops his trembling hand. His breath is jerky. His hands move into fists. He takes a step forward. “So, Sherlock, who have you killed?”

Sherlock startles. “I - I don’t - I haven’t killed anyone.” He’s managed to get by so far without having to kill criminals - after all, John killed the cabbie. 

That’s when it occurs to him. He looks at Rose. Her sightless eyes stare back from a macabre visage. 

_ ‘London bridge is falling down -’ _

“Stop!” he yells and jumps up from the table, clamping his hands over his ears.

John lurches forward. Sherlock throws up his hands to signal him to wait. He’s dizzy, and his limbs feel weak.

“Sherlock?” John says, his voice filled with uncertainty.

“Wait, I…” The house again. Walking down the hallway. The room filled with the dolls. “I haven’t killed anyone, but it’s like...she’s in my head...she’s been in my head all along. I’m wrong. It’s all wrong.” His stomach is tense, and he’s dragging air into his lungs. 

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t - your sister and Clara, they never heard the doll.” Adrenaline bursts through him, ending the shaky feeling in his knees. He snatches up the paper bag and pulls it over the doll. Scoops her up with the bag. Her feet stick out the top. “But we did. She’s been talking to me all along. And I haven't killed anyone. So there must be some other reason why this is happening.”

“What are you doing?” John says.

“I - there’s only one person who thinks like I do. He’ll be able to help us figure out what’s happening.” He leaves the bag on the table as he swings his Belstaff on and buttons it up. 

“Who?”

_ ‘Come on Sherlock, don’t you want to play?’ _

Sherlock shakes his head of the voice, suppresses a cry in his throat. “Get your coat, John.”

John’s already there, slinging his jacket on and shoving his feet into his boots. Sherlock follows suit and then he grabs the bag and secures it under his arm. “I don’t know - I don’t know how it works. She makes me...she makes want to…”

John grabs his arm. “I know. I’ll go with you. I’ll be right beside you.”

“You’re not safe, either.” He wonders if John has had any strange dreams this night. 

“We’ll keep each other safe.”

_ ‘He’s trying to come between us - don’t let him do that, Sherlock. You said you were my friend.’ _

Sherlock clamps a hand over his forehead. He squeezes his eyes shut. “How?”

John yanks his hand down and frames his face, making Sherlock look him in the eye. “Don’t listen to her. Listen to my voice. We’re getting a cab. Is that okay?”

“Yes.”

* * *

“Remember our first case?” John says to him in the backseat of a cab. “You trying to prove you’re clever.”

“You saved me.”

“You cured my limp.”

Sherlock smiles. He hugs the bag to him, still uncertain of what he’s doing. 

_ Mycroft will know. Mycroft will know what to do. _

But John keeps eyeing the bag. Sherlock doesn’t like it - doesn’t trust John. He was twisted around first by the doll, after all. What if he tries to take her again?

This could all be a ruse. Him distracting Sherlock so he can take the bag. 

He stares out the window into the darkness. His arms tighten. 

* * *

Mycroft Holmes stands in his drawing room in a velvet smoking jacket that matches the burgundy of his silk pyjamas. Sherlock rolls his eyes at the ostentatious display as Mycroft pretends their appearance at some ungodly hour in the morning is expected. He turns on the lamps and flicks on the gas fireplace, inviting them for a seat.

When he’d opened the door to them - after talking to them through the posted video cameras and speaker - he seemed a strange mix of pleased and displeased. Likely pleased because he knows it means Sherlock needs his help, displeased at the timing.

“Drinks?” Mycroft offers as he gestures toward his bar cart. 

“This isn’t a social call,” Sherlock snaps. He keeps the bag with Rose to one side, away from John and Mycroft. 

Mycroft peers at it. “And have you brought me a gift?”

Sherlock reinforces his hold around the bag. He doesn’t like the look in John’s eyes.

“Tell him,” John says. “Tell him everything you told me.”

Sherlock bites down on his lip. “It’s a doll,” he says.

Mycroft arches his brows and gestures for them to sit again. 

Sherlock sits on the leather wingback chair, and Mycroft sits in the one across from him. John sits on the sofa, the vertex of the V facing the fireplace.

“John moved in with a family heirloom,” Sherlock says. He doesn’t show them the contents of the bag, though everyone can see the black-shoed feet sticking out on white tights. 

_ ‘Don’t do it. They’ll take me from you.’ _

Sherlock grits his teeth and his knee jiggles, bouncing the bag slightly. He launches into the story. He tells Mycroft everything - his discovery of the doll in John’s room, his observation of John’s behaviour around the doll - including his lies, and then he tells him everything he knows about John’s grandfather, his grandmother, his father and his mother. He says it as quickly as he can, even as the voice digs at him, as if pressing tiny fingers to his brain matter in an effort to find an off button. 

_ ‘Watch his eyes. Now he’ll want me for himself, too.’ _

“Harry and Clara thought the doll was a joke, a gag for Halloween,” he finishes. “It would seem the doll was inanimate to them, entirely.”

“And now it’s talking to Sherlock. Or Sherlock is talking to it, which shouldn’t be happening if he hasn’t killed anyone.” John’s face is lined in anger. In the low lighting of the room, his face looks more haggard, like the threatening face of a storybook killer. 

Sherlock glares at him. "I haven't."

Mycroft hasn’t moved. Sherlock watches as his brother’s eyes flick from the bag to Sherlock and to John and back. 

“Tell him about your conversations with the doll, Sherlock,” John demands, his jaw set and his eyes dark.

Sherlock purses his lips. The doll is quiet now. No one sings in the back of his mind. “For the past few weeks, I’ve been having dreams.”

John’s head snaps up. “You didn’t tell me about any dreams.”

Sherlock ignores him. “I dream of an upstairs hallway with tall windows. At the end is a door, and the room is filled with dolls.” He strokes one hand over the bag. “I think a little girl lives there. I’m at a loss as to what it all means.” His hand trembles. “I keep thinking this is where this doll lived once, that she was the little girl who lived there.”

He looks to Mycroft, whose eyes are as wide as saucers and face as pale as the moon.

“What do you think, big brother?” Sherlock says in a quiet voice, barely a whisper of wind through dead leaves. “Can a girl inhabit a doll?”

Mycroft stares. And stares. His mouth opens and he rubs one hand over it and then over his hair, mussing it. He stands, not looking at either Sherlock or John, and heads for the bar cart. He leans into it as if he can’t stand on his own and pours himself a drink. 

“John? Sherlock?” he says, his voice a scrape of air on rock, holding a bottle of whisky out to them.

John shakes his head no. Sherlock sits and says nothing, indicates nothing.

Mycroft draws himself up, takes up his glass, and moves to the chair, almost as unsteady as a toddler who’s just learned to walk. He sits in the chair and swallows all of the contents of the glass.

“Mycroft.” Sherlock’s skin prickles. The shadows of the room seem larger somehow, and the sensation that he’s being watched pokes at him, makes him think of a time when he crawled into the old hay barn at his uncle’s farm. He fell asleep among the bales, which poked and scratched at his skin. The dust was inches thick all over the beams, and the hay made him cough and sneeze when he finally awoke to the panicked cries of his parents, calling him over and over: “Sherlock? Sherlock!”

He’d almost called back to them, but a movement in the dark corner stopped him, triggered within him a sense of danger that caused him to go still, his heart icing over with fear and his breathing shortened and shallow.

When his parents had finally entered the barn, he squeaked. Yelled just loud enough for someone to hear him. His father had climbed up into the loft and gathered him up, rebuking him for making them worry and hugging him out of relief. 

His mother cried when his father delivered him to her arms.

“Eurus loved dolls, and mother loved to collect them for her,” Mycroft says.

The name shoots a spike of cold down his spine. “Eurus?”

“Eurus,” Mycroft says. “Our sister.”

Sherlock can sense John’s movement on the sofa. His own heart is racing. Mycroft stares into the fire.

“Wait, you have a sister?” John says.

“We did.” Mycroft’s eyes meet Sherlock’s. “She died at age four. Almost five.”

The shadows in the room coalesce, condense within Sherlock’s line of vision. A girl’s room full of dolls. The porcelain doll with the pale blue eyes and the brown tresses. Who lit match after match while Sherlock reassembled Rose in the kitchen of 221B.

“Eurus was very clever, far too clever. She was also devious. Malevolent.”

“A child?” John sounds outraged.

“To think of her as a child would be to put oneself in danger,” Mycroft says. “As Sherlock’s poor friend Victor Trevor was to discover.”

Victor Trevor. A small boy with blond hair and beautiful blue eyes. How he laughed and laughed as they played pirates along the rocky shoreline. 

The doll - the other one, with the brown hair and pale eyes - was watching them from several meters away, an angry pout on her face. 

“Victor and his family moved away,” Sherlock says.

“No,” Mycroft says. “Victor’s body was found in an old well. He was six.”

Sherlock flinches. 

“She told you and I she’d done it, but she would never say anything to the parents. Ours or Victor’s. Or to the police. We looked like two rotten boys blaming a child’s death on their bratty little sister. Or rather, I did.” Mycroft looks at Sherlock again. “You wouldn’t speak of it.”

“How did Eurus die?” John asks.

“I wasn’t in the hall myself.” Mycroft watches Sherlock, who shifts in his chair, as if many-legged creatures wriggled beneath his skin, centipedes sliding between bone and sinew in an effort to escape any light of truth. “Sherlock was. I did smell the petrol, though.”

_ Petrol. _ Sherlock stands. He draws air into his lungs but the stench of petrol chokes him. 

The doll standing before him with her book of matches.

“No,” he says.

It wasn’t a doll. It was a girl. A girl named Eurus. Her porcelain skin was human flesh and her glass eyes were a mix of viscous fluid and sclera and other anatomical structures with proteins as the basic building blocks. No glass. No special colourants. It’s almost a relief.

But it’s horrifying, too.

“Do you remember, Sherlock?” Mycroft says in a soft tone of voice.

Sherlock can remember it. She’d hated him. She’d hated him, and she’d hated Mycroft, and she’d decided, on a night when their parents were out, to kill them both. As easy as pouring an accelerant in the hallway outside their bedrooms and lighting a match. 

They’re on the stairwell. Sherlock had heard noises and smelled the unusual odour and left his room to investigate. She stands with her hands behind her back, and a little red can from the garden shed at her feet. 

“We’re going to play a game,” she says, and holds up the matches. “Go back to your room.” She was used to Sherlock doing as she asked after Victor had died. He was afraid of her, and she liked it. 

Just as she reaches to pull out a match, Sherlock hurtles himself down the hall. He smashes into her, propels her tiny body backwards. He’s screaming as he does it, his voice ringing through the hall like the cries of a banshee. Eurus tumbles down the stairs and when she hits the landing Sherlock hears a terrible  _ crack. _ He’s lying at the top of the stairs. When he peers over the top step, he sees her in a sprawl, her legs sticking out from her white, ruffled nightgown, her hair pooled around her head. Her eyes, unseeing, open, and pointed at the ceiling. Glazed over. Glassy. She’s a fallen doll, and Sherlock is the one who broke her.

He yelps when he feels hands on him. It’s a young Mycroft, pulling him into his arms, lifting him up and away from the stairs. “It’s okay,” Mycroft says, though he could be no more than twelve himself and can’t actually know if anything is okay. But then, then, Mycroft was Sherlock’s world. His protector. “It’s okay.”

“It’s okay.” It’s Mycroft’s adult voice now, beyond the years of puberty. “Sherlock, it’s okay.” 

Sherlock grabs his head with one hand, clutches the paper bag to him with the other. The crinkle of the paper rips through the air. “What? Mycroft, how - how could I - ?”

“The mind works in funny ways, doesn’t it?” Mycroft says. “You were only five. You didn’t speak to anyone for the year after it happened. Mummy and Father sold Musgrave Hall.”

_ Musgrave Hall. _

“We moved to another home. And when we did, our parents never put her photos back up. They saw the petrol and the matches. She still held them in her hand when she fell. You were near catatonic. I told them that I heard your screaming. I told them you’d saved us from dying in a burning building, just as I told them that she was behind putting Victor in the well.”

“I killed her,” Sherlock says.

“You did,” Mycroft says. “You saved us. And then you seemed to forget. The doctors said that they thought it was a kind of transient global amnesia, at first. But when it seemed you possessed no memories of her, they said it was likely a retrograde amnesia. The brain’s way of protecting you. Our parents...thought it best to let you forget. I agreed with them.”

“She’s weird, Sherlock,” Victor is saying. He stands next to Sherlock in dungarees and a blue jacket with a hood. “I don’t wanna play with her. She’s creepy.” 

“Don’t call my sister creepy,” Sherlock says with all the indignance of a small child.

Victor shakes his head, mutters something, and walks off.

Eurus, her hair in pigtails, watches him go with no expression on her face.

“He doesn’t mean it,” Sherlock says. He’s worried, and not for her, but for Victor. But it’s been weeks since they’ve been able to play together, and he wants to join his friend in pirate games.

Eurus turns to him, a tear rolling down one perfect, chubby cheek. 

“But he’s here to play with me today, so I’m going to go play with him now. We can play later together, okay?” He’s nearly begging her to understand.

A second tear joins the first. Sherlock steps back. Turns away. Goes after Victor, following the footprints made by the boy’s wellies. 

_ ‘I just wanted to play Sherlock. I only wanted to play.’ _

Sherlock looks now at John. “I can’t kill her. She’s there, in the doll.” She’d needed a friend. “This is my chance to make it up to her.”

John is standing now. He takes a step forward. “Sherlock. That isn’t her. I don’t know who it is. When - when the doll spoke to me, it was a boy, a boy whose life I ended. He wasn’t more than fourteen and he was in this family that said they were happy to have us there, but he wasn’t and he was aiming a gun at one of my men and so I shot him.”

The two stand there, eyes locked on each other. They’re not close enough that their breath can easily intermingle, but Sherlock can picture it anyway, a circuit of shared breath between them. 

“And I’m a good shot, Sherlock. It didn’t have to be a kill shot,” he adds. “But it was. I shot to kill.” Sherlock can see it now, the way the guilt yanks his shoulders down to earth, the way the furrows of his face deepen in sorrow. 

Sherlock shakes his head. “Don’t blame yourself, John.” He holds out his hand. “You’ve done enough carrying around all the blame in your life.”

It almost happens too quickly. The flash of his brother’s hand whipping out to snatch the bag - Sherlock twists to dodge him. John’s arms slip around him - wrench his shoulders back as Mycroft jerks the bag from Sherlock’s grasp. 

_ Traitor! _ Sherlock twists inside John’s hold, but John drops him on the floor with a swipe of his feet. 

Sherlock begins to shove himself up when John shouts, “Stop! I have a gun!”

He freezes from his crouch on the floor. Looks up at John, and sure enough, John is poised, feet spread, shoulder cocked, gun in hand and aimed -

At Mycroft.


	9. A Stain

“Give me the bag,” John says through clenched teeth. 

Mycroft glances between them. “John?”

Sherlock whips his head around to see John. He’s on his hands and knees, but as still as he can be, he says, “John. Please. That’s Mycroft. He’s my brother.”

“He wants her for himself,” John says. “She talking to you, Mycroft? Hm? How many people have you killed with your work in the government?”

Mycroft’s throat bobs with a swallow.

“John,” Sherlock says. “Mycroft isn’t the type to do the dirty work himself.”

“Oh, come off it!” John shouts. He gestures with one hand. “Throw it here, now. Or I’ll shoot.”

Sherlock looks at Mycroft. Sweat glistens on his brother’s forehead. A clock in another room chimes, its announcement of the hour bleeding through the walls. When it ends, the room is deathly silent. 

“Give it to him,” Sherlock says in a rasp. He tries to broadcast his plan to Mycroft with a movement in his eyebrows.

Mycroft adjusts his grip on the top of the bag. Looks to John, dips his arm, and tosses it over.

It sails in an arc over the drawing room. 

Sherlock springs up like a tightly wound coil. He bats one hand through the air, makes contact with the bag, and spikes it into the fireplace. His ears register the  _ click _ of the gun as John pulls the trigger, but his eyes stay riveted on the bag as it catches flame and crackles.

Somewhere in his Mind Palace, a girl tumbles down the stairs. A little boy looks on, shaking, and gasping for air.

“No!” John yells and lurches forward. Sherlock throws himself in front of the man to prevent him from retrieving the doll. The two fall to the floor with a thud. Sherlock slides his fingers to John’s hand to relieve him of the gun.

“Oh my god,” John whines. 

Sherlock holds him close and watches the fire burn. The smoke changes colours, now blue, and white, and then black as pitch. The bag curls in on itself as the strange odour of burning horsehair penetrates his nose. The bag burns away and the dress smokes and browns as the edges catch. The body, composed of sawdust, cornstarch, resin, and pulp, is melting. 

The glue holding the head together is failing, and the pieces begin to slide apart. The glass eyes glow with the heat. It’s a gruesome and grisly sight, but Sherlock makes himself watch, holding the man he loves in his arms.

Mycroft lowers himself to the floor. Side by side, they wait as the bisque pieces of her head release their hold on the eyes, and shift to fall below the grate. Her dress turns to ashes, raining soot on the unglazed porcelain, and her body melts away. 

John lifts his head to see. “Not everything burned away.”

“Not hot enough,” Mycroft murmurs.

Sherlock nods. “Maybe, the eyes we’ll throw into the Thames. The pieces of its head we’ll keep separate and bury in the earth. Whatever we have to do to keep its influence from reaching others.”

“Mm. Like the Maenads tearing Orpheus asunder, and sending his bits and bobs to different corners of the earth. His head was still able to speak, you know.”

“This isn’t some Greek tale.”

“No, it’s a modern day take on one.” Mycroft lifts himself up by pulling on the arm of the nearby chair. “Maybe the Trojan horse. Either way, I’m taking no chances. I’ll have it properly burned at the necessary temperatures.”

Sherlock looks at John. John stares at the fire, but he seems aware of Sherlock’s gaze. He drops his head to Sherlock’s shoulder. “Is it really over now?”

Sherlock hugs him close, can smell his sweat and his fear. “Yes.” He can’t say anything but yes, and believe it must be true.

* * *

“I fired the gun,” John says. 

Mycroft’s installed them in one of the guest rooms. It’s a spacious room with a double bed and large windows facing the garden. The sky is turning into the beautiful grey-blue of approaching dawn. But Sherlock would prefer to be back at his bedroom with its one, tiny window in the cramped flat. He’d numbly accepted it when Mycroft herded them in here. Everyone was already in pyjamas. It was just a matter of removing their coats and their boots.

“I knew you’d bring it,” Sherlock replies. John sits on the bed with his head in his hands. It was more for his sake that Sherlock agreed to come into here. Both of them are exhausted, and while the unlaid truths have rocked them, John seems as if he might collapse at any moment. 

“Get under the covers,” Sherlock says.

“I shot at you,” John says. “I pulled the trigger. It didn’t - it didn’t go off.”

“Earlier today, I emptied your gun.”

The room fills with a heaviness, even as the brightening light uncovers the edges and corners. 

“You emptied it?”

“I did. I didn’t know whether you...would try to take the doll from me while I was in the kitchen, and I emptied the chamber.” Sherlock kicks off his boots and gets into the bed. “You didn’t notice. A worrying sign of your decline. Normally you’re far more cautious with your weapon.”

John is rubbing at his temples, hard, so hard Sherlock fears he might actually shovel out the layers of epidermis with the pressure of his thumbs. Sherlock grabs his shoulder and brings him down on the bed beside him.

John’s eyes glint with unshed tears.

“It’s over,” Sherlock says. “This time, I’m certain.”

John curls into him, his fists gripping the front of Sherlock’s pyjama top. He buries his head in his chest.

“John,” Sherlock says. “It wasn’t you. That wasn’t you. We were manipulated.” And it was never a con. John was as honest as he could be, with her poisonous whispers in his ears. 

John shakes his head. “I should have been stronger,” he murmurs against Sherlock. Sherlock has to strain to hear him. 

“It defeated your parents. Your grandparents. Your grandmother was unable to destroy her. We did.”

“I was going to shoot you.”

“Why? Why were you going to do that?”

“I - I don’t really remember. I just suddenly knew I couldn’t let you have her.”

“Because you wanted it for yourself, or because you were afraid I wouldn’t destroy it?”

“I - both. Both thoughts went through my head.”

“One of those thoughts didn’t belong to you; not really.”

“You hit it into the fire.”

“My hypothesis is that it couldn’t keep its hold on all of us at once. It hops around from victim to victim. While I was having dreams, it never spoke to me like I presume it spoke to you. When you had shaken yourself of its hold, it turned to me.” Sherlock thinks again of doll-Eurus, sitting beside him with her matches as he reassembled Rose. “I suspect tonight was a last-ditch effort to save its life, but neither of us was a particularly good candidate for a full possession.”

“Except I shot at you.”

“Because you had two thoughts. One of those thoughts was to do the best for everyone involved. What if I was trying to get the doll so I could keep it for myself rather than destroy it?” He strokes John’s shoulder, traces over the naked skin of his arm. “I did have that thought, you know, John. I hit the bag like I did because I didn’t wish to hold it, in case its influence increased when I came into contact with it.”

“And...you have killed someone.”

Sherlock tries not to wince. “I have.”

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock, I’m so sorry.”

“Well, apparently,” Sherlock says in a low voice with a small smile, “She wasn’t a very good sister.”

John’s barks a laugh, brought short - no doubt - by his sense of propriety. “Oh Christ, we’re terrible. We shouldn’t laugh like this. It’s awful.”

Sherlock’s smile grows bigger. “It’s one of the things I love best about you.”

John stills. 

Sherlock breathes into his hair, the fine silver blending with sandy blond. “John?”

“We fit together, don’t we?”

“Like opposite strips of velcro.”

John huffs. “I can’t believe you’re holding me like this even after all this...after I held a gun to your brother and shot at you.”

“I love you,” Sherlock says.

John looks up, his face wet. “God, Sherlock.” His eyes dip away and back. 

The kiss is gentle at first; it’s healing. It’s wet, and then it’s a clash of tongues and teeth as John rolls Sherlock onto his back. Sherlock melts beneath him, allows John to reclaim him. Their frantic lovemaking will help John to feel some semblance of control, of mutual trust and care. For Sherlock too. He needs it. He needs this, to have the man he loves reaffirm their place in each other’s lives. 

John is  _ his. _ And he is John’s.

* * *

Sherlock stands by the fireplace wearing his coat and scarf. Mycroft appears at the door.

“You’ve cleaned it out already.”

Mycroft points to a plain shoebox on the coffee table. “The remains are there.”

John appears in the doorway as Sherlock opens the box. Shards of soot-stained porcelain lay half-buried in the ash. The glass eyes lay there, pupil and iris down.

Sherlock picks them out of the box and looks at John who watches him with obvious trepidation. Sherlock hands him one of the eyes. John accepts it, slowly. An act of trust.

Sherlock places his eye on a wide board of the wooden floor. He lifts his foot and stomps it with his heel. A satisfying crunch hits the air.

John smiles at him. Mycroft rolls his eyes. “I suppose I shall fetch the dustpan and broom,” he grumbles and turns. 

John puts his glass eye on the floor and stomps his foot down. When they lift their feet, the glass is in smithereens and dust.

“How does it feel?” Sherlock asks.

John grins at him, dopey and lovestruck. It’s like that first night, when the two of them leaned against the wall in the foyer and laughed. 

They can do this. They’ll get back on track, back to cases, and back to arguing and bantering over experiments and telly and chip machines.

“Let’s go home,” he says.

* * *

Walking inside 221B feels a little like returning to the battlefield. Both of them drag their feet. Neither removes their coat. Sherlock runs his hands over the skull and the bat and the mantle. Everything is in its place. John looks at the ceiling and at the floor and in the corners.

“I feel like this place is stained somehow.”

“Hm,” Sherlock says. “Like rose madder.”

“Rose madder?”

“The colour of the doll’s dress. The dye used is one called rose madder, for the name of the plant from which it originates.”

“Of course you’d know that.”

Sherlock looks out the curtain. He’s thinking now of memory, and of stains. How some stains you can never get out, even if it’s not very noticeable. They linger.

“I don’t want to leave here,” he says. “This place - “

“But what we experienced here -”

“It wasn’t this place. That was the doll, and us. And now the doll is gone.” Sherlock keeps looking out the window. People are going about their day - a woman in a puffy jacket with her black braids swinging behind her, hurrying out of Speedy’s, a man strolling down the street with his dog on a lead. Sherlock has set up his business here. He lives above Mrs Hudson, whom he loves almost more than he loves his own mother. 

And John.

“This flat is where you and I began in truth,” he says. “It needs to become fertile ground for making new memories, and we’ll begin by forgiving ourselves and each other. We’ll go back to solving cases and you can enact whatever little courting routines you like to do even though I’m already yours; I’ll pretend not to like them but secretly love them, and at the end of the day we’ll fall into bed together. Because we’re Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and it’s the two of us against the world.”

He takes a look at John. John stares at him as if he’s said or done something brilliant. A smile spreads across his face, and his eyes shine.

“Sherlock,” John says. “I’m a man with a temper and a tendency to be grumpy in the mornings. I also have a crazy family history and one time I was possessed by a doll. Potential...boyfriends should know the worst about each other.”

Sherlock can’t stop the smile from blooming across his own face. “Funny you should mention the doll. Something quite like that happened to me, too. I also underwent some very traumatic things as a child and as a result, I apparently altered my memories.”

“You also keep body parts in the fridge and play your violin in the middle of the night,” John says.

Sherlock waves that away. “Not the worst things.”

John steps toward him, takes Sherlock into his arms. “I didn’t tell you before, but just so you know, I love you.”

Sherlock presses his forehead to John’s. “I do know that.”

“Do you?”

“It may have escaped your notice, John, but I am a genius.”

John tips his head back and laughs. “My genius.”

“Yours.”

John smiles at him. “You’re right, we can do this.”

“You and me,” Sherlock says.

“Against the world,” John replies, and leans his face in, and they kiss.

“And Sherlock?” John says when they part.

“Yes, John?” Sherlock murmurs against his lips.

“Let’s make a new rule: no dolls allowed in this flat.”

Laughter ripples through Sherlock. “Now that is a rule with which I can concur. Human body parts, yes; dolls, no.”

John’s laughter is the best thing Sherlock’s ever heard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments and kudos. I value them all, and am answering comments as I get a chance to sit down and do so! Thank you, thank you, thank you. 
> 
> If you haven't read my other fic, [Haunted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162524/chapters/50369450), and you liked this one, I think you'll enjoy that one too! Happy Halloween!


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